I would love this in Australia, all the private school soccer mums would revolt!
Well. This makes no sense for me. How do SUVs deffer from other cars? They take only one parking lot and many SUVs are even smaller than an average car. Why not to rise parking costs for luxury cars?
RTFA
Years ago, I heard an NPR piece about a French -ologist of some kind, who was revolutionizing advertising in the States, and he mentioned a small car that consumers viewed as saying “Rape me!” We are all driving around in jacked up station wagons, because of some weird, atavistic urges to feel inviolable and cosseted.
Fundamentally, SUVs are an inefficient design for a passenger car. Even small crossovers, and I drive one myself, are inefficient relative to a station wagon offering the same volume and space for passengers and cargo.
SUVs burn relatively more gas, they use more tires, they damage roads more, they are less controllable due to higher centers of gravity, they have poorer visibility of pedestrians and cyclists, and they require shitloads of engineering just to hide their shitty performance and safety characteristics.
The problem with station wagons is that they are too low. They can easily stuck in mud or snow and it’s easier to hit a rock or something. And about tires. I used the same set of tires for 11 years on my SUV. And modern cars are quite fuel efficient so there is no significant difference in fuel consumption anyways you don’t want an always fuel hungry monster and it’s better to consider mere efficient alternatives. Considering roads: well, in fact many roads are in quite bad condition so roads make damage to cars not vice versa :) And it’s always better to have bigger wheels and higher vehicle to avoid crushing into a big pothole. about safety: modern SUVs have safety measures like stabilization you are just supposed not to drive recklessly. SUVs have poorer visibility but it’s not that bad unless we are talking about american-style trucks. Of course I am saying all this thinking about average european SUV and they are abute the size of average sedan or hatchback or even smaller.
If you have the time (35 min), this video does a great job of explaining the distinction.
If you have even more time, I recommending looking into Strong Towns, of which the same creator summarized in this series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
This channel opened my eyes to the extremely terrible world of car dependency that we live in. I will warn you that once you know this, you will never see the world the same way again, but it’s extremely important that we know about this problems so that we can push our governments to fix them.
The key word here is “unnecessary” but in fact the circumstances make us use SUVs because of bad weather, bad roads (and even absence if roads), a lot of stuff to transfer (from furniture and fridges to bikes). For traveling SUVs and minivans are perfect. If I lived in a center of a city and/or I didn’t have to go to a countryside and I didn’t have relatives or friends (or I hated them) I’d considered buying a micro car! But in any other circumstances it would be a hatchback, SUV, minivan or even fully-fledged offroad truck. Considering what people around me are driving it’s mostly SUVs because it is an optimal car type. Even some carsharing cars and taxis are SUVs. That is why I’m surprised by these news about rising parking prices.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/jN7mSXMruEo
https://www.piped.video/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
5.6% participation. A joke
Well, those who did not vote are complacent to the majority vote. So I’d say that’s a win.
Always go out there and vote, regardless of the option you choose. That’s what keeps a democratic system up and running. If you don’t, you just agree with what is decided by others and stay complacent.
True, dummies that ignore local votes are jokes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a referendum on Sunday, which was closely watched by other capital cities, including London, 54.6% voted in favour of special parking fees for SUVs, according to provisional results.
“Parisians have made a clear choice … other cities will follow,” said Paris’s Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, adding that road safety and air pollution were key reasons for the vote.
She said the aim was to deliberately target the richest drivers of expensive, heavy and polluting cars who had not yet made changes to their behaviour to address the climate crisis.
Emmanuel Grégoire, Paris’s deputy mayor, posted on X as voting began: “Heavier, more dangerous, more polluting … SUVs are an environmental disaster.”
Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital.
The motorists’ lobby group 40 Millions d’Automobilistes had argued that drivers should be free to choose whatever vehicle they want, warning that the move to raise parking tariffs was unjustified and the work of “an ultra-urban and anti-car minority”.
The original article contains 540 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
54.6% doesn’t seem like a clear choice to me.
It’s not a landslide but it’s pretty clear which side one. Now 50.1% could be a rounding error.
I think with votes like this, especially with the low turnout, it just shows most people don’t really care because they don’t feel directly impacted one way or another. The people that feel impacted negatively by SUVs slightly outnumber people who feel impacted negatively by increased parking prices. That’s the result.
This law is aimed at visitors’ cars, so residents of Paris are excluded from the higher tariffs and remain unaffected.
Wait, they banned electric scooter rentals?
Is the main argument that they’re unsightly?
They said they’re dangerous and cause stress for pedestrians
Wouldn’t this apply to both rented and personally-owned scooters though?
Getting rid of the rentals might reduce the number temporarily, but doesn’t really seem to solve the problem.
most people who buy their own don’t leave it out on the street, and (while I’m not in paris…) my experience is they also tend to be more responsible about it. like riding while sober, wearing helmets, and being in the bike lane (or wherever they’re supposed to be)
Yeah I think you’re dead right there.
The rental scooters do seem to bring out the worst in people, or maybe they just tend to hilight people’s general disrespect for “things” particularly those which do not belong to them.
People will always take care of their own stuff better than someone else’s.
Edit: I’ve also noticed that people aren’t using them that much where I live. They were all over the place for a minute, but now don’t see them very much.
Someone who owns their own scooter is more likely to know local laws on where not to scoot - and if they don’t they can more easily be fined and learn them. Tourists rarely understand local traffic laws and, while you can fine them, they’ll leave next week and then a new tourist will arrive that also lacks that knowledge.
This seems like a very solvable problem.
It’s surprisingly difficult! Do you think you can turn right on a red in Provence? Would you remember to double check all your assumptions before going on vacation? Would your muscle memory fail you?
There are a truly staggering number of stories of people getting on the highway the wrong way or going into the wrong lane at an intersection when driving in the UK - there’s so many laws and habits we learn to operate in our society… and those aren’t the same everywhere.
Well yes, and yet even with these lapses you mention our cities are not in eternal pandemonium.
Laws, signage, design of street scapes et cetera, all contribute to homogenising behaviour.
It gets rid of all the unused rental scooters lying around on the sidewalk, and that was seen as the biggest nuisance. Privately owned scooters will never reach the same height of scooter littering.
The rental scooter companies were unwilling or unable to deal with the issue. They were warned that this was becoming an issue.
Privately owned scooters will never reach the same height of scooter littering.
Perhaps not scooter “littering” but surely just numbers of personal transport devices.
That is to say, if no other form of transport existed, then the presence of rental scooters would surely mean that there were fewer scooters in total and thereby fewer scooters parked on the sidewalk.
If you own it, presumably you’ve spent more time using it, meaning you both look and drive in a more controlled manner
Stand up scooters should use the bike lanes.
Because humans are known for following rules to a fault.
so instead of that one rule, you think it’s better to have a different rule?
Well… yes ?
I mean there will always be people that break the rules but in my experience once something becomes a law, like smoking in certain areas or whatever, people tend to follow the rules.
The rule already exists, living in the suburbs and working in Paris, I can tell you that they ended up forbidding them because a lot of people weren’t using them on the road.
The performance envelopes of vehicles sharing bike lanes these days are wildly different. I dread the day that RTO is complete, and rush-hour bike lanes are shared by e-bikes, e-unicycles, one-wheels, push scooters, e-standup-scooters, smaller sit-scooters, monkey bikes, e-skateboards, skateboards, and whatever else I’m missing.
What’s RTO?
But anyway those belong in bike lanes except sit down scooters.
Return to office.
AFAIK, the main issue wasn’t where they’re used but where they’re stored. While scooters riding on sidewalks is an issue, the bigger issue is them cluttering the sidewalk and becoming an impedance to pedestrians, especially those with disabilities.
Interesting. I’ve seen this where I live, rental scooters just littering the sidewalk.
I wonder, whether personally-owned scooters will become more prevalent if rentals aren’t available.
I guess personally-owned scooters are going to be parked more responsibly rather than just left wherever.
I see a lot of people where I live riding around on scooters but haven’t seen the rental ones here like in bigger cities so I guess personally owned do become more popular if you can’t rent
So, I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the rental-scooters, not all scooters, which, peopel who tend to buy their own don’t do these things… but…people get hurt on them, they increase accidents. People do stupid shit, like riding on sidewalks and trying to zip through pedestrians.
they get locked up all over the place, blocking sidewalks, entryways, bikeracks, etc.
in short the rental things are a massive nuisance,
I’d like to add that Paris is one of the tightest cities there is in Europe. there’s just so little space already. with thousands of badly parked scooters cluttering up sidewalks people got fed up very quickly. the vote was pretty one sided IIRC.
They just chucked them in the river where I’m at.
Easiest vote in the world is to vote to raise someone else’s taxes. We should do that for billionaires.
Actually, in Paris, if you own an SUV or drive one in the city, you’re rich. Poorer can’t afford one and even a car is too expensive. It’s already a tax on the rich.
For more taxes on the wealth, it’s up to the national government and it’s a complete different story.
Not just “someone” else’s. SUV owners’. Specifically. For a good reason.
Awesome, fuck SUV’s
Yes! Fuck them! Wait…what? Why can’t i park my Peugeot e-308 there? WHAT? No! That’s not an SUV! Well…it’s 1759 Kg and therefore an SUV. This rule is utter stupidity.
1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles
There might be silly examples to find, but yours isn’t one of them.
I would look for cases where moving from petrol to hybrid pushes you over the limit. I think they should be measuring size and fuel efficiency, rather than weight.
I came down the comment section searching for exactly this kind of argumentation. Thank you!
54.6% voted for the increase… turnout was 5.7%. So just over 3% of the eligible Parisian population voted for this.
This special tariff is aimed at visitors’ cars, residents are excluded and remain unaffected, as are tradesmen and care services. So most Parisians don’t care.
And even then, only a third of Parisians own a car.
Ah yes, as an Englishman I can wholeheartedly agree making decisions on minor majorities is a fantastic idea, right guys?
Well, people always have a tendency to not show up to vote and then complain about the results.
Out of curiosity, how do you know they’re the same people in both groups you described?
LOL at all the SUV drivers that didn’t go to vote
They were trying to find parking during the vote and missed it.
The turnout for those things is always extremely low.
This thread was weird to read as an owner of a CR-V. I checked and it’s just under the weight limit for the new law, and it fits easily in “compact” parking spaces, but I think of it as an SUV because that’s what it looks like.
I drive a crv and have always known it as a crossover. Although funny that you mention compact spots, I looked it up one time to see if a crv counts and it does count as compact. Never the less I had a guy scold me for parking in the spot one time. His sedan definitely had a bigger foot print and he was right on the line, while I was comfortably in the middle of the spot.
I just looked down at the line between our cars and kind of raised my eyebrow at him while pointing out my car is smaller than his.
At least in the US they call them crossovers, unless they’re on a truck chassis, then it’s an SUV.
This distinction isn’t really common parlance or anything, but it usually is how the manufacturers call them.
Yes it is aimed against heavy and large suv, as they are more dangerous for other road users, more polluting and take too much of public place in a cramped city.
A CR-V and other “normal” suv does not take more place than a sedan
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It’s not like it would be impossible to sell. Yeah maybe not to Paris people but it is possible. Yeah is a bit of a burden…
But tbh most didn’t need a SUV in Paris…for the off chance they went somewhere else were it makes sense…once or twice.
Dude have you ever been to Paris? Have you seen how the people live? What is that tower of ignorance that you’re speaking from? Anyone who drives an SUV in Paris likely doesn’t have a real, traditional job at all. The costs associated with owning a large vehicle there are absolutely insane, starting from gas, taxes, and parking costs, ending with literally not being able to go into some streets if your vehicle is too large. It won’t be a problem for these moneybags, don’t speak for them.
The whole point of the regulation is to decrease the use SUVs in the city for health and safety reasons. If cost doesn’t matter to them, then this regulation is meaningless. It seems the people who pushed for this, and presumably most of the people who voted for it, disagree with you.
If it weren’t already unethical and obnoxious to drive an SUV in Paris, I’d agree that it should be phased in. As it is, however…
If we couldn’t do that, it’d be pretty difficult to ever back down from a bad policy decision, which isn’t exactly great either.
but I don’t really like the idea that something you already own outright can be regulated to the point where it’s highly inconvenient or impossible to use.
It was highly inconvenient for all of those people who had cars that took leaded gasoline to have to either keep buying lead substitute to put in their tank at an extra cost or sell their car.
Guess we should have kept lead in gasoline.
How else would regulation work? If we didn’t allow changing anything that already exists, there’d still be cars with leaded fuel everywhere.
One has to take responsibilities for what he purchases. Most SUV buyers have not ‘cutting costs’ as a priority.
Boo hoo, cry me a river
“But that will make it cost prohibitive to own an SUV!!!”
Yes… Yes it will.
You call it a bug.
I call it a feature.
Not for those who can afford 100k+ to buy it in the first place. There will be some who see this as a further requirement to show the world that they are rich enough to belong to an exclusive club.
Good. They are about as expensive as normal car park fees in Amsterdam.
While this is great, someone who doesnt mind paying a 100k for a car wont mind the extra fees.
What would really change the game is changing existing parking spaces to fixed size parking spaces and if your over that you get towed.
That would mean they have to park their car somewhere more remote which would incentisize not buying huge cars to begin with
Not saying this is what you’re saying, but the average french SUV doesn’t cost 100k. In-laws bought one almost new for 15k. They’re not poor, but definitely not rich, and would think twice about buying one next time if it means they pay more for parking.
15k seems like a Dacia Duster. That isn’t considered a SUV according to the limits of that law (1400 kg)
It’s more to limit those useless monsters like the range Rovers
It’s an Opel something, as I said I’m not an expert in shitty cars 😁
i guess it’s an opel mokka, which is a fatter opel corsa with the same specs except being heavier and less efficient
Is a 1401kg 5 door EV considered an SUV?
For electric vehicles the weight needs to be over 2000kg in order to be considered a SUV
15k for an almost new SUV? I think you are probably confusing a CUV with an SUV
15k € used. The (french) car dealer called the car a SUV, but I’ll admit I’m not an expert.
But even if you call that something different, there aren’t a lot of 100k SUVs in France, I can tell you that.
French people will drive a 20 year old kangoo and be proud of it. I know because that is me.
I can’t speak for Parisians, but here in the us my experience is that it’s the people who drove the big cars who bitch the most about the price of gas.
So the added cost would definitely be a disincentive.
We drive a Toyota Yaris and bitch about the price of gas.
There’s a ridiculous thing in the US that Europeans probably don’t know about called “rolling coal,” where people in big pickup trucks that they never use for hauling anything because it would scrape the bed modify their truck to belch out a huge cloud of black smoke on demand.
I have a Prius. They love doing it to me, because of course a hybrid that still uses gas must mean that I’m one-a them commie tree-hugging hippies. They probably pay as much in gas to do it once as it would take to get my car to go 5-10 miles. And they’re the ones putting Biden ‘I did that’ stickers next to gas pumps when gas prices go up.
Hey rednecks, you know what you have to do to not worry much about gas prices? Buy a fuel-efficient car.
Oh we know, we’ve seen the videos.
While this is great, someone who doesnt mind paying a 100k for a car wont mind the extra fees.
Not just that, it removes the… let’s call it ‘shame factor’. Some people that would feel bad about driving big, polluting cars in the city now will feel perfectly justified: they are paying extra for the privilege. This will not reduce the number of cars and likely will increase it. It’s simply a bad policy. As you said, number of parking spots for big cars should be reduced each year putting greater and greater pressure on the owners to get rid of them.
It’s a gentle nudge.
If you’re picking a car, and didn’t think about it very much, something like paying more for parking might well nudge you to a smaller car.
And it means when those 100k cars go on the second hand market for 20k a few years later, the people paying that much will not be happy with the fees.On a slight tangent, range rovers are being targeted by criminals. To the point where RR ups the security, and it’s worked around in a month or so.
This has lead to insurance premiums going way up. And while there are a few people just choking down the payments, others are switching away from RR, or from SUVs entirely.
It doesn’t put every customer off, but it certainly affects a chunk.and if your over that you get towed.
A neighbor of mine who was a 60 something year old accountant got one of those oversized pickups and managed to block my space multiple times since he couldn’t angle it in correctly.
Parisians hate their fellow countrymen almost as much as they hate Americans.
This has to be the most American take of the week
Car-brain plus assuming the french think about them, that’s some top tier copium
Nah, I’ve spent some time in Paris.
That doesn’t improve your take lol
Bruh, when you get a SUV/truck to drive around, you’re declaring war on everyone else. It’s literally an arms race.
Are you sure about that? I know someone that drives a 2003 CR-V not because he wants to, but because he got it for free and can’t afford to get a new or used car.
Wrong thread?
Maybe it’s because the MINI Countryman SUV is a UK brand manufactured by a German car company…
Parisians don’t give a shit about Americans one way or the other. I was just there and everyone was nice to me like they are to everyone else.
It’s so weird how there’s this stereotype about French people hating Americans when people seem to have forgotten that Republicans once hated the French so much (for daring to not join America in a war) that they changed ‘French fries’ to ‘freedom fries’ for a while. And then there’s the bullshit “France always surrenders” meme that so many Americans believe. The French military is fucking fierce.
In my experience, it’s Americans who hate the French a lot more than French people hating Americans.
In my experience, the French who hate the Americans are the ones who travel. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from there
You’re not wrong, I’d say your average French that didn’t travel much and works for French companies basically doesn’t care about Americans at all. It’s when you actually go there or work for American companies that you start radicalising…
And we wear
Canadian flags
When we travel
On our bags
'Cause we are Americans (ah yeah!)
– Corky and the Juice Pigs, Americans
Suck it, SUV owners in Paris.
But really, suck it every SUV owner. They’re terrible in every single way and no one can change that.
As an SUV owner, I agree. It tries to do too many things, so it’s not good at any of them. When we had kids, I wanted a minivan. They’re ugly, they don’t get good gas mileage, their handling is like a pregnant yak- but if you need to haul around kids and their stuff, there’s nothing better. My wife at least considered it, but we ended up with a hybrid SUV. I don’t completely hate it, but I still would rather have gotten a minivan.
I have a compact SUV (CR-V.) It gets good gas mileage and has enough room for my very large dogs. Some people have reasons, just a lot of people don’t.
I’d like to see a tax on ego trucks first.
Comments from @[email protected] are terrible in every single way and no one can change that! Good stuff, the fact that Paris classifies everything above 1,6 tonnes as an SUV, so that put’s even a measly Peugeot e-308 in that cateogry. But it’s a compact BEV! Still weighs 1759 Kg.
It’s actually 2 tons for evs specifically to account for that.
Good luck defining what is and isn’t an SUV and try to enforce parking restrictions based on that.
Companies will just define their own classes to avoid this unless there is a solid measurement in either dimension or weight. If it’s weight then they will be destroyed by the media for being anti-EV and if it’s size then the whole SUV argument goes out the window
For example is Audi A8 not an SUV but Ford Puma is?
Total outside dimensions. If it takes up more space than the typical economy car it pays the high tax. Since you seem a bit pedantic I will define it exactly:
Take the vehicle and put it in water, use weights if needed to submerge it. Measure the displaced water. If that value is above that if a typical economy car it pays a higher tax. Economy car is defined as the what an average of a poll of randomly selected people defined it to be in 2024.
I would be a little annoyed if they did this to my car in a parking tbh/j
It is for the greater good they all chant as they drop it into the pool
Always good to go back to medieval witch hunting in a pinch.
“Drop it in water, if it floats it gets extra tax!”
They defined it as above 1.6 tons (metric) for ICE/hybrid and 2 tons for EVs
Well that was easy.
What about hybrid crossover SUVs?
They pay an additional tax for being ugly
Seriously, just because something has a battery doesn’t mean you have to pull the animators from the Jetson’s out of storage to design a future car.
