FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS — Two hundred and twenty-five euros for six hours of parking in Paris, for some categories of drivers. Which? It is not easy to identify them, because the consultative referendum “against SUVs” wanted, organized and won yesterday – with 54% – amid controversy by the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo is full of difficulties and contradictions.
It was the first vote in a large city to oppose a car model which in recent years has continued to gain market share (51% in Europe) but which is accused of being too polluting, cumbersome and dangerous. Hidalgo’s fight against cars in the city targets a type of car criticized as anti-ecological, a kind of vulgar cube car deserving of tripled fares.
But, in the meantime, the very few Parisians who went to vote – 78 thousand out of 1.3 million eligible voters, 5 percent – expressed their opinion on measures that concern them only indirectly, because the new parking prices are aimed only at those arriving from outside Paris. According to regional councilor Pierre Liscia, “ecology has nothing to do with it, it’s just a matter of making those arriving from the suburbs pay more, to fill the municipality’s coffers and save it from bankruptcy.”
Then, there is a lack of a univocal definition of SUV. And in fact, if the posters of the Municipality had been reading for weeks «More or less SUVs in Paris? Vote on February 4th”, the word “SUV” has disappeared from the voting slips. At the polling stations yesterday there were two cards: «For» or «Against» «a specific tariff for the parking of heavy, bulky and polluting individual cars». The generic wording reveals the underlying problem, namely that the new tariffs will affect not only some — not all — SUVs, but also normal family cars.
In theory, citizens were called upon to penalize the enormous car, perhaps suitable for Texas ranches but not for the boulevards and even less for the narrow streets of central Paris. In practice, Hidalgo’s collaborators were forced to combine different parameters such as engine and weight. Therefore parking will cost triple (18 euros in the arrondissements from the 1st to the 11th, 12 euros from the 12th to the the 2 tons”.
The application of these criteria gives some curious results: a petrol Ferrari F8 will not pay the special rate, and neither will the large diesel Peugeot 5008 SUV, very polluting but relatively light (1.51 tonnes), pay more, while it will pay the triple a car that is not an SUV at all, the hybrid Peuge0t 308 sedan, smaller and less polluting than the diesel but weighing 1,603 tons.
If the point is to discourage heavy cars, it must be said that mayor Anne Hidalgo’s car, the electric Renault Zoe, weighs more than the Renault Captur or Dacia Duster SUVs. The opposition accuses mayor Hidalgo of demagoguery and a farce referendum, she speaks of the “success of direct democracy”, the debate now moves to the city council.