Paris
Declaration of war on SUVs: parking fees will be tripled
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo at a polling station. photo
© Thomas Samson/AFP/dpa
For years, Paris has been pushing ahead with a transport revolution that is making space for cars scarce. Parking fees for SUVs are now being increased following a citizen survey. This is being followed with interest in Germany.
The Paris city administration has been fighting for a traffic change and less car traffic for years – now SUVs are affected by a drastic decision that is also making people sit up and take notice in Germany. In a citizen survey on Sunday, a majority voted in favor of tripling the number Parking fees are imposed for heavy city off-road vehicles.
The city administration thus pushed through its plan to charge 18 euros instead of the usual 6 euros for one-hour parking for SUVs and other heavy cars in the center and 12 euros instead of 4 euros in the outskirts. For six hours of parking in the center you will have to pay 225 euros instead of the previous 75 euros. The new regulation should take effect from September 1st.
Low voter turnout
Around 1.3 million residents of the capital took part in the vote under the motto “More or less SUV in Paris?” called. Around 54.5 percent voted in favor of increasing parking fees, around 45.5 percent against it. However, participation in the vote was only just under six percent. The city administration did not want to accept objections that the result was hardly representative. After all, tens of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity for direct citizen participation.
“The Parisians are the vanguard of a movement, many cities will certainly follow suit,” said Mayor Anne Hidalgo after the decision. “They want to take space away from these heavy cars on the roads, for environmental reasons and for safety reasons.” The decision is good for the planet and for health. The city argues that the heavy bodies caused increased environmental pollution, took up a lot of public space and endangered traffic safety. The same points of criticism are raised again and again in Germany.
Only visitors should pay the special tariff for SUVs in Paris. Residents should be excluded, as should tradesmen and care services. The tariff should apply to combustion engine and hybrid models weighing 1.6 tons or more and electric models weighing two tons or more. The regulation does not apply to private parking garages. In Paris, the fight against SUVs is part of a traffic turnaround that has been pushed forward for years by the socialist mayor Hidalgo and the red-green city government.
Germany is also looking at the plans in Paris
It has not yet been explained how exactly the monitoring of the new parking fees will work. If you park in Paris, you enter your car’s license plate number into the parking machine and pay for the desired time. Police officers have been history for several years. Video surveillance vehicles drive through the streets and record the license plates of all parked vehicles. Anyone who hasn’t paid will be sent a ticket. With this system, the license plate would also have to provide access to the vehicle type in the future – and what happens with foreign license plates is another question.
Germany is also looking at the plans in Paris. Hanover’s mayor Belit Onay (Greens), for example, advocates making parking for SUVs more expensive. The Paris citizen survey shows that the debate needs to be about the scarce public space and more appropriate pricing for parking, he said. All major European cities face this challenge.
Criticism of the project
Also with a view to Paris, the German Environmental Aid (DUH) recently called on all German cities to set higher parking fees for ever larger city off-road vehicles. “These monster SUVs are increasingly blocking sidewalks and green spaces and endangering people who are on foot or cycling,” said DUH Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch. The General German Automobile Club (ADAC), on the other hand, does not consider higher parking fees to be a suitable solution. His objection: This would also affect vehicles that are not classic SUVs.
The German Association of Cities and Municipalities expressed skepticism. Staggering parking fees based on vehicle size is difficult to implement in practice and has so far only been attempted by a few cities. In 2023, the Federal Administrative Court determined that jumps in fees based on vehicle length should not be too large. Illegal unequal treatment must be ruled out.