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Anyone who uses more of a scarce public good should also pay more for it. People across the party spectrum should actually be able to agree with this logic – from left to libertarian. There is also likely to be a consensus that street space in inner cities is a scarce public good. The space can be put to good use – for example for cycle paths, benches, trees, flower beds.
If most of the streets in the city center are still blocked by parking on both sides, this is a clear grievance. Because only a minority of people in cities even own a car. Nevertheless, they occupy a large part of public space and pay nothing or ridiculously little for it. The fact that they believe they have a right to it is based on a misunderstanding: it is at best a customary law. And habits can be changed. As a suggestion, German Environmental Aid recently called for cities to charge higher parking fees for ever-increasing SUVs.
Your own possessions right on your doorstep
But many act as if it were a fundamental human right to be able to leave one’s possessions right in front of the door around the clock. Of course, every person should be granted the right to individual mobility. But if this comes at the expense of society, rights must be weighed up.
Social reasons are often cited for maintaining parking spaces in residential areas, such as the case of the famous single-parent nurse working shifts. This may well be justified in individual cases. But the example does not speak against the principle of charging more money for increased use – on the contrary. Which brings us to the topic of SUVs.
SUVs (in the sense of “pointlessly oversized vehicles”) are a good opportunity to think through the matter of balancing rights. Firstly, SUVs are even more anti-social than normal cars: they obscure the view, are more dangerous for potential accident opponents, put a strain on curbs and sidewalks, and hinder emergency services and garbage collection. And one-way streets are often impassable for bicycles if an SUV is coming towards them. So please don’t tell me, dear SUV drivers, that the choice of car is a private matter.
Gregor Honsel has been a TR editor since 2006. He believes that many complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand but wrong solutions.
Secondly, there are no social reasons why SUVs should be spared. Those who ask their owners to pay more do not affect the poorest in society. After all, you have to be able and willing to afford these things. And no one who – for whatever reason – absolutely depends on a car needs an SUV.
“Parking fees are higher for larger vehicles”
The German Association of Cities sees the matter similarly: “In narrow streets in urban residential areas, it makes a difference whether small cars or SUVs are parked on the side of the road. The space in cities is far too valuable to be used only as a parking space or for lanes,” says the general manager Helmut Dedy. “It would make sense to charge higher parking fees for large vehicles.” But federal policymakers lack the courage to hand over more decision-making leeway on parking space management to the municipalities.
Some cities have already experienced this. There was discussion in Frankfurt about completely banning the parking of vehicles weighing more than 2.8 tons in some places. This failed due to the lack of a legal basis.
Things were similar in Breisgau. Freiburg actually wanted to significantly increase resident parking fees to 360 euros to 480 euros per year, based on vehicle length – combined with a social discount for hardship cases. But the Federal Administrative Court overturned this regulation last summer. Freiburg has now decided on an annual fee of 200 euros – but without a social discount.
Differentiated resident parking fees have been a reality in Tübingen since 2022. Parking spaces for combustion engines over 1.8 tons and electric vehicles over 2 tons cost 180 instead of 120 euros per year. Paris now wants to take a similar path. There will be a referendum there at the beginning of February on tripling parking fees for particularly bulky cars. Combustion engines over 1.6 tonnes and electric cars over 2 tonnes are affected. For them, parking fees in the center are to rise to 18 euros per hour and on the outskirts to 12 euros per hour. According to surveys, there is an approval of almost 60 percent for this project. Unlike in Tübingen, however, the special tariff should only apply to visitors, not to residents, craftsmen or nursing services.
However you control it, wherever you set thresholds, however you differentiate between residents and visitors, whatever exceptions you allow: Tackling SUVs harder would not only help traffic in the cities, but also social balance .
(grh)
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