There are those who don't want petrol and diesel cars because they pollute too much. And there are those who, for the same reason, don't want the SUVs. Paris knows something about this, which after having called an anti-scooter referendum several months ago is now returning to vote to limit the circulation of large crossovers: the question that the citizens of the French capital will have to answer today concerns the introduction of a tariff specific parking for individual cars labeled as “heavy, bulky and polluting”.
Why SUVs?
According to the latest WWF reports, Repubblica reports on newsstands this morning, SUVs do not bring so many advantages for the environment: require more materials to produce, consume 15% more fuel and emit 20% more CO2 than a sedan. Without forgetting the risks that they cause to other road users: in this case it is not the WWF but the Parisian mayor Anne Hidalgo who highlights the problem, explaining how accidents involving cars of this size are twice as deadly for pedestrians than those of a normal car.
A new parking fee
And so, the administration is thinking about introducing a new “tax” that would discourage SUV owners from using their cars in Paris: should the referendum pass, those who use vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tons (or 2 tons for electric ones) will have to shell out 18 euros per hour for parking in the central areas of Paris and 12 euros for the more peripheral areas, in short triple compared to today's rates.
We vote today
Paris is not the first French city to move in this direction: also Lyon and Grenoble, just to name two, have decided to increase parking costs to discourage the use of the most polluting vehicles. We would like to point out that, due to lack of requirements, compact SUVs and large sedans would be “safe” from this possible extra fee. We will see what the outcome of the vote will be: the attacks on the referendum they were not missedbetween those who say that the question is posed in an aberrant way and those who criticize the lack of differentiation between internal combustion SUVs and hybrid and electric SUVs.
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