FILE – SUV automobile drive on the Champs Elysees avenue, close to to the Arc de Triomphe Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024 in Paris. Paris residents are voting on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024 whether or not to muscle SUVs off the French capital’s streets by making them rather more costly to park. It is the newest leg in a drive by Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo to make the host metropolis for this yr’s Olympic Video games greener and friendlier for pedestrians and cyclists. (AP Photograph/Michel Euler, File)
PARIS (AP) — Parisians had been voting Sunday whether or not to muscle SUVs off the French capital’s streets by making them rather more costly to park, the newest leg in a drive by Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo to make the host metropolis for this yr’s Olympic Video games greener and friendlier for pedestrians and cyclists.
Hidalgo is searching for voters’ backing for a proposal to triple parking charges for SUV drivers from out of city.
In get-out-the-vote posts on social media, Hidalgo argued that SUVs take up an excessive amount of area on slender Parisian streets, are too polluting and “threaten our well being and our planet,” and trigger extra site visitors accidents than smaller automobiles.
“The time has come to interrupt with this tendency for automobiles which are at all times greater, taller, wider,” she stated. “You could have the ability to take again possession of our streets.”
The fee for non-residents to park SUVs in Paris’ central districts, within the arrondissements numbered 1 by 11, would soar to 18 euros ($19.5) per hour for the primary two hours, in comparison with 6 euros per hour for smaller automobiles.
After that, parking would turn into more and more punitive. A six-hour stick with an SUV — sufficient, say, to soak up a present and a restaurant — would value a whopping 225 euros ($243), in comparison with 75 euros for smaller autos.
Away from the guts of town, in Paris’ outer arrondissements numbered 12 by 20, an out-of-town SUV driver would pay 12 euros per hour for the primary two hours, progressively rising to 150 euros for six hours.
The mini-referendum was open to Parisians registered to vote. The query they had been requested to vote on was: “For or in opposition to the creation of a particular price for the parking of heavy, cumbersome, polluting particular person automobiles?”
Voting stations had been to shut at 7 p.m., with outcomes anticipated later Sunday night.