The hourly cost of parking an SUV in Paris city centre for non-residents will jump from €6 an hour to €18, after Parisians voted to back the move.
Less than 6 per cent of the city’s population voted in Sunday’s referendum on hiking parking fees for out-of-town SUV drivers.
A total of 78,120 people out of the capital’s population of 1.3 million eligible voters cast a vote across polling stations in the capital, answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question: “For or against the creation of a specific rate for the parking of heavy, bulky polluting individual cars?”
55 per cent voted in favour of the proposal. The vote means that non-residents who do not have a special licence from local authorities will pay €18 to park per hour for the first two hours in the city’s central districts, compared to €6 per hour for smaller cars.
Thermal or hybrid vehicles of more than 1.6 tons and electric vehicles of more than 2 tons will see their parking prices triple because of the vote.
It means that six hours of parking an SUV will amount to €226, much steeper than the €75 it will cost to park smaller vehicles.
The proposal, which made headlines in the summer, is part of an effort by the city’s socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to make the host city for this year’s Olympic games more green-friendly.
Welcoming the result, Hidalgo hailed what she said was a “clear choice of Parisians” in favour of a measure that is “good for our health and good for the planet”.
“Parisians want to limit the place of these vehicles in our streets for reasons of road safety and for reasons of pollution. This is a source of pride for us,” the Mayor said after the vote.
However, the driver campaign group 40 Millions d’Automobilistes – “40 million motorists” – a national association which defends the rights of motorists, hit out at the referendum result, describing it as “a coward vote” and “green populism.” The association said it would be families who would “be the first to suffer” as a consequence.
The association said the low turnout meant there was “no clear majority” – pointing out that the turnout was lower than the vote of self-service e-scooter rentals in Paris, which led to their ban last Spring.
“In addition, on this low participation rate, 1 in 2 Parisians voted “for” this measure: there is therefore no clear majority, contrary to what Anne Hidalgo claims,” the group said.
“However, the mayor is not the mayor of one in two Parisians. Without a clear consensus, this idea should be inapplicable.”
The association claimed that the wording of the question was oriented so that the “for” would “prevail massively.”
“During the vote, the term “SUV” was not used, contrary to what appeared on the municipality’s posters; but prohibited vehicles were defined as “heavy, bulky, polluting individual cars”. In reality, this measurement is based on the weight of the vehicle and not on its actual size,” 40 Millions d’Automobilistes said.
The association said on Monday that it denounced “a new extremist project and green populism” which it claimed aims to hinder the mobility of motorists via a “poltron vore.”
“It is the families, who are the main users of large cars, who will be the first to suffer. The association calls on the Minister of Transport to intervene against this project of the city of Paris.”
The vote has prompted questions about whether other European cities could soon follow in the footsteps of Paris.
The Green Party has proposed an SUV tax to cut the use of fossil fuels. Last Autumn, the government announced it will examine taxing higher-polluting SUVs.
Minister for the Environment and Transport, Eamon Ryan, told an Oireachtas Committee in November that “we will go back and look at the tax issue” this coming October.
“One of the things I will be saying to the Minister for Finance is if you look at an SUV, and think over the 10 or 15 years of its lifetime what the emissions are,” Mr Ryan said.
“There are also safety issues around SUVs, but if you look at just the emissions from a non-electric SUV, and you calculate that over the 10 years, whatever it is, what is the cost to the Exchequer if we don’t meet our European commitments,” he said, referring to EU rules around reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“That may change the Department of Finance view, I hope, in continuing where we have been going, which is to tax more for the high-polluting and less for the non-polluting. The economic case for that becomes all the stronger when you realise that an SUV running for 15 years is costing the Irish public in terms of its emissions.”
However, the proposal has attracted criticism, and has been labelled by some as “the family car tax” –amid concerns that families with children would be disproportionately targeted through such a tax.