Paris votes to crack down on SUVs | Non-Parisians will be charged almost $20 per hour to park large gas or hybrid vehicles within the city center in a bid to address pedestrian safety and air pollu…::Parisians have voted to increase parking charges for out-of-town SUV drivers as part of the city’s efforts to address road safety, air pollution, and climate change.
I don’t think some millionaire earned a 2x chance to kill a pedestrian by being able to pay. I’m not a fan of fees that only apply rules to poor people.
But outright bans are harder to get passed, so fees are better than nothing.
Funny thing about markets though, when you put fees on SUVs that just means the prices on used SUVs will go down, and so you’ll have fees being leveed on only the poorest who have no choice but to buy the cheapest car they can find and the richest who don’t care about the fee.
They can still buy used regular cars. Anyway, in Paris and its suburbs, poor people can’t afford a car in the first place.
That’s a very ivory-Tower retort - ‘they can still buy regular cars’.
If you can barely put food on the table and NEED a car (eg for work), and nearly nothing in your bank account, do you spend $3000 on a sedan or $1000 on an equally good SUV?
Second hand market prices in general are extremely demand driven, and with vehicles in particular there are so many other costs to vehicle ownership that a change in price won’t shift overall demand much. This just changes the balance pushing SUVs to the bottom of the market. Nobody buying a Porsche SUV in Paris cares about your silly tax.
Can you give an example of a job you would need a car for in Paris?
Tradespeople, they generally own their own tools and bring several boxes to even a basic job, plenty of jobs where you don’t need a dedicated truck.
My time in Paris was before we had kids, so I don’t know about the logistics there, but in NYC where I did not even think about owning a car for years it’s Very difficult without a car, and there are no more than a few neighborhoods with everything is actually available locally.
Also anyone just starting their business who doesn’t have a purpose built vehicle yet - breaking into catering, flower shop, etc.