Paris’s new €18-an-hour parking fee for out-of-town SUV drivers will come into effect despite having the backing of just 6 per cent of eligible voters.
Barely one in 20 registered Parisians took part in a “citizens’ vote” organised by Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo on Sunday in which a slim majority approved the tripling of parking fees for SUVs weighing more than 1.6 tons (2 tons for electric vehicles).
The €18 hourly charge replaces the previous fee for city centre parking which was €6.
Elsewhere in the city, parking rates for SUVs will rise from €4 to €12. The fare increase is expected to bring in an extra €35 million to city coffers.
Christophe Bechu, France’s environment minister, slammed the terms of the vote and said the SUV surcharge amounted to “a kind of punitive environmentalism” – even if drivers should “opt for lighter vehicles”.
Low turnout
Of the 1.3 million eligible voters, around 78,120 people cast a vote on Sunday. The question posed on the ballot was: “For or against the creation of a specific rate for the parking of heavy, bulky polluting individual cars?”
Some 55 per cent of the voters that turned out opted in favour of the heightened fee. Polling predictions released last month had pegged support for Ms Hidalgo’s anti-SUV, clean air referendum at 61 per cent.
The ballot attracted even fewer voters than the seven per cent who turned up for the mayor’s referendum on e-scooter rentals that led to their ban last spring.
Despite the paltry figures, Ms Hidalgo said she was “proud” of Parisians’ “clear choice” in backing higher parking fees, while noting “fairly strong East-West divisions”. The Right-leaning western 16th arrondissement voted by almost 82 per cent against the mayor’s proposal, which explicitly targeted SUV, which account for almost half of all new car registrations in France. In the eastern, Left-leaning 10th arrondissement, on the other hand, 76.8 per cent supported the move.
The reform will be “presented to the Paris City Council in May, for implementation on 1 September”, she added.
Legal complaint
But municipal opposition group Changer Paris (Change Paris) denounced the measure as a “poorly thought-out and demagogic publicity stunt”.
Conservative opposition party the Republicans and allies said that the vote had taken place “in a climate of general indifference”.
“This very low turnout, combined with the close results on a measure that Anne Hidalgo and her team claim to be emblematic, is a real disappointment for the mayor of Paris,” it said.
According to the Auto Infos website, the employers’ organisation Mobilians and the pro-motorist Drivers’ Defence League have filed a legal complaint with a view to annulling the ballot on the grounds that it was preceded by unfair anti-SUV propaganda, and that the municipal council, not a small group of Parisians should have the final say.
The parking levies could affect popular models such as the Land Rover Discovery and Jeep Wrangler, but will not apply to Paris residents, taxi drivers, health professionals and parking permit holders for people with disabilities.
Last week, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, indicated that he would be watching the results closely, telling The Guardian: “We always examine policies around the globe. I’m a firm believer in stealing good policies. Rather than inventing [new policies] badly, if other cities are doing stuff that works, we will copy them.”
Similar ballots may now take place elsewhere in France with the Green party mayor in Lyon planning a three-tier parking fee for both residents and visitors from June.