Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

> the turnout (5.6%) is even lower than when it was decided to ban electric scooters public sharing (7.4%).

These things should really have a quorum requirement.

That’s because it makes more sense financially for car makers to make larger cars [1]

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/29/us-car-cost...

This article leaves a lot of details out. As a Parisian who's been following this with attention, here are a few details:

* first, the "SUV" part is the intent, but not the reality. It's actually by weight: over 1600kg for ICE and 2000kg for electric/hybrids. A lot of French SUVs fit under those restrictions (for example Peugeot 2008/3008). It's unclear to me if there is really something specific to target those SUVs as well (I have not read the full text)

* part of the issue is width rather than weight: cars become larger and no longer fit in the parking spots. Parking spots minimum width in Paris is 180cm. For example, a Porsche Cayenne (a typical SUV) is 198cm without mirrors, 219cm with mirrors deployed. Being at least 20cm outside of the parking spot is an issue, roads are narrow.

* this is only for paid surface parking for non-residents. Residents price is not impacted (which is controversial). Underground parking is private and not affected. Free parking (outside of 8AM to 8PM Monday to Saturday) stays free for everyone.

* In general, underground parking is cheaper than surface parking even at the normal price. This will likely push those cars underground, which is IMO a good thing (especially because of the width issue).

* this vote is controversial in the first place (much like the rental scooters one was recently): the result was expected: it doesn't really affect negatively Parisians, only outsiders, and is strictly a QoL improvements for Parisians. I'm actually surprised it's not a landslide, but I guess the people who went to vote are generally more likely to have a car and vote against because of that.

* there were other questions asked for specific arrondissement. Those were important as well.

Edit: of those questions, only one arrondissement rejected its question (8th, which is also one of the least favorable over the poll). Those questions were mainly around reclaiming space from cars to allocate to pedestrians/cyclists/green spaces.

It's quite tricky actually.

There's other negative externalities from car usage apart from the energy usage, like tire and brake dust, congestion, accidents, and road wear. And using up limited space in cities for parking. Etc. etc.

Even if you only wanted to tax energy usage, that clearly correlated with the amount of fuel or electricity used. Taxing liquid fuel is common and a sensible choice, however you can't slap on a big tax on electricity in general since if anything we want to encourage electricity use in favor of fossil fuels (e.g. heat pumps powered by zero-carbon electricity instead of gas heating, or indeed EV's instead of ICE vehicles). And arguably for electricity, it would be better by slapping a CO2 tax on the producers (or some roughly equivalent scheme like cap-and-trade) rather than taxing electricity generally.

And of course, if you want to tax by miles driven, that then gets into all kinds of problems how to track that in a way that doesn't enroach on people's privacy. Say, checking the odometer during yearly inspections?

So where does that leave taxing EV's? Maybe a flat yearly fee based on the weight isn't that terrible, and it's at least cheap to administer and doesn't leave much space for cheating. Although that is of course very unfair to those who live out in the boonies where parking space is not at a premium and drive very little.

The free market solutions are more of a thought experiment than a practical answer. They show how absurdly subsidized driving is. But if you actually implemented them they would make car usage not viable instantly which is too rapid of a change to go down smoothly.

The non market legislation solutions like the OP article are a much softer landing which guide people towards the end goal without immediately bankrupting people.