As of: February 7, 2024, 10:46 a.m
By: Andreas Schmid
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An SUV is parked in Munich-Schwabing: Should higher parking prices soon apply to heavy cars?
© IMAGO/Wolfgang Maria Weber/Steinach (montage)
Should SUV drivers pay higher parking fees in Germany like in Paris?
When asked, the parties are divided: does it make sense or is it a ban?
Paris wants to ban heavy cars from the city center.
That's why parking fees for certain vehicles are set to increase dramatically.
This is the result of the referendum “More or less SUVs in Paris?”, which was approved with 54.5 percent.
This means that from September onwards, one-hour parking will cost 18 euros in the center instead of the usual six euros and in the outskirts twelve euros instead of four euros.
So the price is tripled.
The tariff should apply to all combustion engine and hybrid models weighing 1.6 tons or more and electric cars weighing two tons or more.
The rule targets visitors.
Residents of the city center as well as tradesmen and taxi drivers are exempt.
Is something like this also conceivable in Germany?
SUV decision in Paris: This ban policy is intended to harass and exploit people with cars
The Union sees the goal of tripling parking fees to make inner cities car-free. “But car-free does not automatically mean citizen-friendly,” as Ulrich Lange, deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group for transport, said when asked by
IPPEN.MEDIA
.
Older people in particular rely on cars with high entry heights.
“The across-the-board increase in parking fees for all types of SUVs gives the impression that it is less about reducing environmental pollution and more about making an ideological statement.” Lange also points out the low participation rate in the vote.
“You can see how little support such measures find among the population.”
Participation was actually just under six percent.
However, the Paris city administration did not want to accept objections that the result was hardly representative.
After all, tens of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity for direct citizen participation.
The FDP, however, finds the referendum “hardly representative,” as the Liberals’ transport policy spokesman, Bernd Reuther, tells us.
He rejects similar plans in this country: “This type of ban policy is obviously aimed at harassing and exploiting people who rely on their cars.”
Stricter SUV rules like in Paris: “I have great sympathy for it”
From France it was said that the Paris model could serve as an advance for other cities.
In Germany, Tübingen, for example, decided to drastically increase parking fees for SUVs in 2021.
Other cities could now follow suit.
Hanover's Green Party Mayor Belit Onay said in the
Tagesspiegel
that he had "great sympathy for a price scale for parking fees based on the length of the vehicles." His party colleague Stefan Gelbhaar, transport policy spokesman for the Green Party in the Bundestag, welcomes such city-related initiatives.
“It must be decided on site whether and how parking space management can be designed sensibly,” says Gelbhaar when asked.
“This municipal freedom of decision has not yet been given, not even when it comes to the design of parking space management.”
That's why new road traffic law is needed.
However, it is unclear whether this will happen.
“This amendment for more local leeway needs the approval of the states in a mediation committee.” The SPD also wants local communities to be able to make more decisions on transport policy on site.
“The SPD parliamentary group campaigned for this when reforming the road traffic law,” says SPD transport politician Mathias Stein.
He finds the Paris decision “understandable and sensible” and says: “In many cities and municipalities, the increasing number of SUVs is a big problem because the vehicles often take up more space than is provided for in the existing parking infrastructure.”
SUVs and heavy cars pay more: “To be welcomed as a short-term measure for German cities too”
Munich's SPD mayor Dieter Reiter sees the matter a little differently: "Debates about envy, like the SUV debate in Paris, ultimately only lead to a further aggravation of the tone between road users." Instead of debates about parking fees, there should be Public transport as a whole needs to be improved, says Reiter.
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The left also calls for better public transport.
Local transport must become cheaper or free,” says transport policy spokesman Bernd Riexinger.
In addition, pedestrian and cycle paths would have to be expanded and city centers would have to be “converted to be car-free”.
Paris could serve as a model.
“As a short-term measure, this would also be welcome for German cities.
These city tanks are increasingly becoming a problem in German cities.
Cars that are getting bigger, whether those without electric drives, are taking up more and more space and displacing climate-friendly road users.”
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