Are big cars in the sights of the Paris municipality? Meeting at the Paris Council on Thursday, Parisian elected officials voted on Thursday for a wish relating to the increase in parking prices for SUVs, carried by environmentalists and supported by the executive. “We would like the City of Paris to change the pricing of paid parking to make it progressive according to the weight and size of the vehicles”, thus launched Frédéric Badina-Serpette, elected ecologist in the 18th arrondissement, in the hemicycle, taking the example of the decision taken by the environmentalist mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet, a few days ago.
The elected official thus wishes to “focus on an absurdity: autobesity”, which he qualifies by “the inexorable growth in the weight and size of the vehicles of the cars which circulate in our cities, and especially in Paris”. According to him, “between 1960 and 2017, the weight of vehicles increased by an average of 62%, their width by 14%, and their height by 21% (…) except that our public space is not stretch”. “So what can we do?” he asked, before answering: “apply the polluter pays principle”.
Concretely, it would therefore be a question of making owners of large cars pay more for parking in paid parking spaces in the capital, in proportion to the size and weight of the car. And this, “from January 1, 2024”. And in order not to penalize Parisians who have no choice but to travel in an SUV, it is planned that an “adapted solidarity tariff” will be applied “to families with the lowest incomes” as well as “to families many who sometimes need a larger vehicle to get around”. “A common sense measure” according to environmentalists, who believe that SUVs are a danger to pedestrians, take up too much space and degrade the roadway.
On the executive side, David Belliard, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of the transformation of public space, transport, mobility, the street code and roads, said he was “very favorable” to this wish, and assured to be “already working on it”, qualifying the SUV “of ecological aberration”. The elected environmentalist also confirmed that the pricing “must take into account the size of the households so as not to penalize large families and in particular the most modest”.
Unsurprisingly, on the other side of the political spectrum, the elected representatives of the Parisian right voted against, without speaking out on the podium. Asked about this, the group Changer Paris – chaired by the mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris Rachida Dati – only regretted that the measure “only targets Parisian residents as in Lyon” and “shows once again that the town hall of Paris takes the Parisians for a cash drawer”.
