Paris politicians have agreed to impose higher parking fees on owners of SUVs, which will see the size, weight of the vehicle and its motor taken into consideration. Electric vehicles and those with large families requiring a bigger car are expected to escape the increased fees that will come to effect on January 1st 2024. Should we be doing the same thing in Irish cities? Brian Caulfield, Professor of Transport at Trinity College Dublin joined RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to discuss. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above).
How are they doing it in Paris?
The new fees were pushed through by the council by a majority, says Caulfied. "The deputy mayor that's pushing this, basically to quote him, said there are no dirt paths or no mountain roads in Paris, so SUVs are completely useless." Over the last decade, Paris has been pushing cars out of the city to free up space taken by traffic and parking, he says. "They're bringing in this charge to hopefully wean people off these larger vehicles."
What about people with large families or mobility issues?
"I think there's been a creep of SUV's coming into all countries across the world over the past decade, or even more. I think that's mainly been driven by - excuse the pun - the motor industry. These are the types of cars that they want to sell. The issues that we had with cars prior to the explosion and the numbers of SUV's were still there as well and we were able to manage without [SUVs]," says Caulfield.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, should all SUVs be phased off Irish roads?
There are "very genuine concerns for a lot of people, around mobility, people that are working, people that need equipment to be brought around, but I don't think that the volume of SUVs that we're currently selling is perhaps sustainable from a transport and traffic perspective, but then also obviously from an environmental perspective too." Caulfield says he has "no idea" how the exemptions from the new parking fees for electric vehicles and larger families will be "policed" in Paris.
Why we need to define what an SUV is
Before we introduce anything similar here in Ireland, "the more important thing is what we define as an SUV," he says. "A lot of people say SUVs are the crossovers or a [Nissan Qashqai] or something like that. I wouldn't classify those necessarily as an SUV. I think we need to have a very good definition of what we mean by it, before we bring in something like this."
A listener wrote using their own cars as an example, saying: "We are two car household, a Nissan Qashqail, described as an SUV, and a Toyota Prius hybrid electric vehicle. The Qashqai does 5 litres per 100 kilometres or better and the Prius averages 6 litres per 100 kilometres. They both occupy the same footprint, so why should the Qashqai pay more?"
Read more: why electric SUVs are a bad idea
"Exactly," says Caulfield. "If this was ever to be brought into Dublin, the State would need to have a definition of what an SUV is. At the moment it's kind of the Society of the the Motor Industry that has loose definitions of what each of these types of vehicles are. We would need to have a firm definition on weight, on emissions, on size as to what these are. I think you'd find then, the numbers that we are selling that are classified as SUVs might be bit less."
How would a higher parking fee work in Ireland?
"There would definitely be an awful lot of pushback. People really like their SUVs in this country and every other country. It was actually proposed 16 years ago in Dublin to do something like this, when we had very few SUVs, but the council at the time didn't go for it. I think it's something that you flag that's coming in five years time or maybe less, that this is gonna happen and SUV's can't come into the cities.
"The main reason is - forget about the climate and all the rest - that these cars are getting bigger, but our city isn't getting bigger, the road space isn't getting bigger, in fact it's shrinking with the increase in numbers of cycle lanes and pedestrians, which is very welcome in the city centre. So that's why these SUVs are an issue in our city centres. Our streets just aren't designed for them."
Read more: why the reign of SUVs on Irish roads should end
Safety is often mentioned as a reason why people like SUVs, but while people might feel safe inside them, "the cyclist that's next to you perhaps doesn't feel safe, because you're so high up and kind of over them as well," he says. "The street space that's in our city is for everybody and everybody should feel equally comfortable maneuvering around the city. And if these vehicles are causing an issue - again, I have to stress that it's not all of these crossovers - but if a certain percentage of them are causing an issue, then we should look to see how we could maybe get them out of the city centre."
