Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 202 posts

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#101

Post by davstr1 »

Gigachad wrote: post #79
davstr1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market solutions are so simple, elegant, natural and organic...I wonder why ecologists hate it that much...not.

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…

Free market solutions should perhaps be more of a general direction than an absolute goal.

> without IMMEDIATELY bankrupting people. Il love the (involuntary ?) irony here !

Indeed, legislation actually bankrupt people. And industries.

The automobile industry is now in bad shape thanks to legislation forcing them to adopt EVs. Even with subventions and taxes/norms for "bad behaving" vehicules, people aren't buying 60K electric vehicules...

Many profesionals now can't afford to go to Paris due to the punitive politics for cars. (think plumber) People with old cars can't go there anyway. Yes, the poor gets poorer with this.

This would go a bit better with an efficient system of public transportation. But since what belongs to everybody belongs to nobody and is taken care of by nobody...

And before that they incentived everybody and their dog to buy diesel cars, only to overtax it a few years later... Example exists in every industry.

This is a never ending story of politicians taxing and legislating what move and incentising what don't. In their own interests, not yours. Repeat and rinse.

Nobody seem to understand that the ones that take decisions (politicians) are often remote from the actual situations, with a set of incentives often misaligned with their targets.

Yet understanding this only takes a game of monopoly with friends or family, or just real life experience that everybody have on how people behave even for very small personal gains.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#102

Post by erostrate »

Fradow wrote: post #75

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…

> 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.

If my end goal was to apply this to everyone at some point, I would probably start with such a restricted law, then extend it step by step later.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#103

Post by grujicd »

rjst01 wrote: post #86
Affric wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people Jeremy.” The popularity of SUVs is driven by a whole variety of factors. Eventually some of those factors will start to weaken. One of the factors is that many of the costs of SUVs are externalised.

Another factor is that car companies market SUVs heavily.

Another factor is that you get often more space in cabin and boot compared to a "regular" car of the same length. I.e. you get more comfort for passengers while still able to fit in the same parking space. It's not just fashion. There are real reasons why families purchase SUVs. SUVs nowadays are not just Range Rovers and BMW X5s, there are myriad smaller vehicles starting from 4m length. Even France's own Renault, Peugeot and Citroen have half of their models in SUV shapes of all sizes.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#104

Post by vr46 »

Zak wrote: post #93
rjst01 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most eligible voters are probably not personally affected and so didn't see a need vote. A quorum would make it effectively impossible to change anything.

The current system makes it possible for a very small portion of the population to change things for everyone. I'm not sure that's better.

Bring in Australian-style compulsory voting then.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#105

Post by graemep »

quonn wrote: post #40
graemep wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people can use a small EV. I am not even sure using a large EV is better than a small ICE once you take into account other forms of pollution, road damage, congestion (which increases pollution as well as other effects) and safety issues.

Sure they can. But currently using an ICE is cheaper than using an EV and they have made it more like this. > I am not even sure using a large EV is better than a small ICE once you take into account other forms of pollution, road damage, congestion Where did I mention large EV? I'm mentioning a normal EV and comparing that to an equally sized ICE. Why would anyone compare a large EV with a small ICE? It's a strange…

> Sure they can. But currently using an ICE is cheaper than using an EV and they have made it more like this.

Running would depend on prices of petrol and electricity. Have you checked what they are in Paris? Overall costs depends on that and purchase cost and usage. An ICE car is cheaper for me because I do very low mileage (a few thousand mile a year, almost none in heavy traffic), I imagine it would be very different for commuters.

> Why would anyone compare a large EV with a small ICE? It's a strange and dishonest comparison.

Because the whole point of the charges is to encourage people to use a lighter car. The weight difference between small and large cars is far bigger than that between EV and ICE of the same size.

You have also not considered other forms of pollution in use (you mentioned production, which is another issue) or road damage and safety (which is directly related to weight).

> Large cars are not significantly longer (they are higher and fatter)

Really not longer? Current Range Rovers are about 5 meters long, that is about 20% longer than typical hatchback. Wider also causes congestion as people need to slow to pass each other more often.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#106

Post by strawberryfie »

Fradow wrote: post #75

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…

It’s interesting that new legislation is baking in the idea that more “sustainable” cars can weigh a lot more. Disappointing that this means we won’t tackle the other externalities of personal motorised transport including size, safety and visibility issues, wear on public infrastructure, and sheer amount of extra material people use to get themselves around.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#107

Post by cpursley »

pjc50 wrote: post #65
cpursley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the downvoters, look it up - this is objectively true and has been well reported. And I’m not saying don’t buy an electric car, just that EV sales have decreased.

No, the absolute sales and percentage of sales is up, it's just the rate of acceleration that's decreased. https://www.ev-volumes.com/

This literally has sections labeled “Lower European Expectations” and “North American fall”.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#108

Post by quonn »

jabl wrote: post #77
quonn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weight is the best way to tax vehicles. No it isn't. Even the most simple look into EV database would have shown that this is flat out wrong. There are heavy and big vehicles in there using very little energy and small ones using a lot. So what should be taxed is the actual efficiency - either per individual vehicle which would also incentivise reasonable driving (could be easily done by either submitting two numbe…

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 sla…

You can slap a tax on the car. You simply take energy used/miles driven and that's your multiplier for a yearly vehicle tax. It could be collected by insurance companies (that usually require you to submit the miles driven anyway) on behalf of the government .

As for the other things, such as congestion, I believe it when I see proof that there is a big difference between cars. Even if there is, the priority right now should be energy efficiency, because reducing CO2 emissions is fairly urgent.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#109

Post by ZaoLahma »

rwmj wrote: post #3

It makes sense that road and parking pricing should be proportional to the size and impact of your car. Hopefully this will encourage manufacturers to produce more smaller cars - it's getting somewhat hard to buy a small car these days. I'd love to have a Japanese-style Kei car.

It would be nice if the rules for 2 wheeled vehicles could be refined as well.

Here (not France) you can drive an EU moped (45km/h) on a car license, which could (and should!) be a great alternative to a smaller car. The problem is that it's difficult to get to and through the city without touching the highways, which are strictly off limits for the mopeds for obvious reasons.

What's needed is something in between a full sized MC and a moped that can be driven on a car license and that can reach at least 80km/h to keep up with inner city highway speeds.

Re: Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

#110

Post by cpursley »

rsynnott wrote: post #46
cpursley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the downvoters, look it up - this is objectively true and has been well reported. And I’m not saying don’t buy an electric car, just that EV sales have decreased.

… Wait, how are you defining ‘downward trend’? The rate of _growth_ has slackened, which you expect as a product category matures, but sales are still very much growing. I’d be a little more sceptical of the media sources doing this well-reporting, if I were you.

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/electric-vehicle-demand-c...
Post reply on HN