Parisians vote in anti-SUV parking and pollution referendum

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Fully electric cars would have to top two tonnes to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities would all be exempt. — AFP pic

PARIS, Feb 4 — Parisians were voting today in a referendum on tripling parking costs for hefty SUV-style cars, a campaign that has drivers’ groups up in arms against city hall.

Some 1.3 million in the French capital are eligible to cast their ballot on the change, which would see cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more charged €18 (RM9.4) per hour for parking in central areas, or €12 further out.

Fully electric cars would have to top two tonnes to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities would all be exempt.

“The bigger they are, the more they pollute,” Paris’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo said in December to justify the step.

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Most people at one polling station in the city’s 10th district said they were voting in favour of the higher fees.

Caroline, a 51-year-old teacher who asked not to give her family name, said she backed the move “for obvious environmental reasons”, adding that “to be honest, no-one really needs an SUV in Paris”.

On Hidalgo’s watch, the city has pedestrianised many streets, including the banks of the river Seine, and built a network of cycle lanes in an effort to discourage driving and reduce harmful transport emissions.

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Environmental group WWF has dubbed SUVs an “aberration”, saying they burn 15 percent more fuel than a classic coupe and cost more to build and purchase.

City hall has further pointed to safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are “twice as deadly for pedestrians as a standard car” in an accident.

The vehicles are also singled out for taking up more public space—whether on the road or while parked—than others.

Paris authorities say the average car has put on 250 kilogrammes since 1990.

Hidalgo, whose city will this summer host the 2024 Olympics, rarely misses a chance to boast of the environmental credentials of the town hall and its drive to drastically reduce car use in the centre.

€35 million per year

But drivers’ groups have attacked the scheme, with Yves Carra of Mobilite Club France saying the “SUV” classification is “a marketing term” that “means nothing”.

He argued that compact SUVs would not be covered by the measures, which would however hit family-sized coupes and estate cars.

Conservative opposition figures on the Paris council say this imprecise targeting of the referendum “shows the extent of the manipulation by the city government”.

Even among fuel-burning cars, “a new, modern SUV... does not pollute more, or even pollutes less, than a small diesel vehicle built before 2011”, said drivers’ group 40 millions d’automobilistes.

“We’re fed up with Hidalgo’s decrees from on high,” said Jeannine, a 75-year-old voting in Paris’s upscale eighth district.

“All these environmentalists are killing us,” she added.

France’s Environment Minister Christophe Bechu told broadcaster RTL the SUV surcharge amounted to “a kind of punitive environmentalism”—even if drivers should “opt for lighter vehicles”.

Hidalgo’s transport chief David Belliard, of the Green party, says around 10 percent of vehicles in Paris would be hit by the higher parking fees, which could bring in up to 35 million euros per year.

Paris’s anti-SUV push has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in France, with the Green party mayor in Lyon planning a three-tier parking fee for both residents and visitors from June.

The last city referendum in Paris, on banning hop-on, hop-off rental scooters from the capital’s streets, passed in an April 2023 vote—but only drew a turnout of seven per cent. — AFP