- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
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5.6% participation. A joke
Well, those who did not vote are complacent to the majority vote. So I’d say that’s a win.
Always go out there and vote, regardless of the option you choose. That’s what keeps a democratic system up and running. If you don’t, you just agree with what is decided by others and stay complacent.
True, dummies that ignore local votes are jokes.
Wait, they banned electric scooter rentals?
Is the main argument that they’re unsightly?
They said they’re dangerous and cause stress for pedestrians
Stand up scooters should use the bike lanes.
AFAIK, the main issue wasn’t where they’re used but where they’re stored. While scooters riding on sidewalks is an issue, the bigger issue is then cluttering the sidewalk and becoming an impedance to pedestrians, especially those with disabilities.
Interesting. I’ve seen this where I live, rental scooters just littering the sidewalk.
I wonder, whether personally-owned scooters will become more prevalent if rentals aren’t available.
I guess personally-owned scooters are going to be parked more responsibly rather than just left wherever.
I see a lot of people where I live riding around on scooters but haven’t seen the rental ones here like in bigger cities so I guess personally owned do become more popular if you can’t rent
Because humans are known for following rules to a fault.
so instead of that one rule, you think it’s better to have a different rule?
Well… yes ?
I mean there will always be people that break the rules but in my experience once something becomes a law, like smoking in certain areas or whatever, people tend to follow the rules.
The rule already exists, living in the suburbs and working in Paris, I can tell you that they ended up forbidding them because a lot of people weren’t using them on the road.
The performance envelopes of vehicles sharing bike lanes these days are wildly different. I dread the day that RTO is complete, and rush-hour bike lanes are shared by e-bikes, e-unicycles, one-wheels, push scooters, e-standup-scooters, smaller sit-scooters, monkey bikes, e-skateboards, skateboards, and whatever else I’m missing.
What’s RTO?
But anyway those belong in bike lanes except sit down scooters.
Return to office.
Wouldn’t this apply to both rented and personally-owned scooters though?
Getting rid of the rentals might reduce the number temporarily, but doesn’t really seem to solve the problem.
Someone who owns their own scooter is more likely to know local laws on where not to scoot - and if they don’t they can more easily be fined and learn them. Tourists rarely understand local traffic laws and, while you can fine them, they’ll leave next week and then a new tourist will arrive that also lacks that knowledge.
This seems like a very solvable problem.
It’s surprisingly difficult! Do you think you can turn right on a red in Provence? Would you remember to double check all your assumptions before going on vacation? Would your muscle memory fail you?
There are a truly staggering number of stories of people getting on the highway the wrong way or going into the wrong lane at an intersection when driving in the UK - there’s so many laws and habits we learn to operate in our society… and those aren’t the same everywhere.
It gets rid of all the unused rental scooters lying around on the sidewalk, and that was seen as the biggest nuisance. Privately owned scooters will never reach the same height of scooter littering.
The rental scooter companies were unwilling or unable to deal with the issue. They were warned that this was becoming an issue.
most people who buy their own don’t leave it out on the street, and (while I’m not in paris…) my experience is they also tend to be more responsible about it. like riding while sober, wearing helmets, and being in the bike lane (or wherever they’re supposed to be)
Yeah I think you’re dead right there.
The rental scooters do seem to bring out the worst in people, or maybe they just tend to hilight people’s general disrespect for “things” particularly those which do not belong to them.
People will always take care of their own stuff better than someone else’s.
Edit: I’ve also noticed that people aren’t using them that much where I live. They were all over the place for a minute, but now don’t see them very much.
So, I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the rental-scooters, not all scooters, which, peopel who tend to buy their own don’t do these things… but…people get hurt on them, they increase accidents. People do stupid shit, like riding on sidewalks and trying to zip through pedestrians.
they get locked up all over the place, blocking sidewalks, entryways, bikeracks, etc.
in short the rental things are a massive nuisance,
I’d like to add that Paris is one of the tightest cities there is in Europe. there’s just so little space already. with thousands of badly parked scooters cluttering up sidewalks people got fed up very quickly. the vote was pretty one sided IIRC.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a referendum on Sunday, which was closely watched by other capital cities, including London, 54.6% voted in favour of special parking fees for SUVs, according to provisional results.
“Parisians have made a clear choice … other cities will follow,” said Paris’s Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, adding that road safety and air pollution were key reasons for the vote.
She said the aim was to deliberately target the richest drivers of expensive, heavy and polluting cars who had not yet made changes to their behaviour to address the climate crisis.
Emmanuel Grégoire, Paris’s deputy mayor, posted on X as voting began: “Heavier, more dangerous, more polluting … SUVs are an environmental disaster.”
Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital.
The motorists’ lobby group 40 Millions d’Automobilistes had argued that drivers should be free to choose whatever vehicle they want, warning that the move to raise parking tariffs was unjustified and the work of “an ultra-urban and anti-car minority”.
The original article contains 540 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
54.6% doesn’t seem like a clear choice to me.
I think with votes like this, especially with the low turnout, it just shows most people don’t really care because they don’t feel directly impacted one way or another. The people that feel impacted negatively by SUVs slightly outnumber people who feel impacted negatively by increased parking prices. That’s the result.
It’s not a landslide but it’s pretty clear which side one. Now 50.1% could be a rounding error.
54.6% voted for the increase… turnout was 5.7%. So just over 3% of the eligible Parisian population voted for this.
The turnout for those things is always extremely low.
LOL at all the SUV drivers that didn’t go to vote
They were trying to find parking during the vote and missed it.
Ah yes, as an Englishman I can wholeheartedly agree making decisions on minor majorities is a fantastic idea, right guys?
Well, people always have a tendency to not show up to vote and then complain about the results.
This special tariff is aimed at visitors’ cars, residents are excluded and remain unaffected, as are tradesmen and care services. So most Parisians don’t care.
And even then, only a third of Parisians own a car.
I’m sure the folks who drive larger vehicles because they’re hauling things like wheelchairs will protest that.
There ARE valid reasons for SUVs.
Luckily the bus and subway in Paris are both wheelchair accessible, safe, and easy to use.
Also it’s extra squeaky!
How is the Metro wheelchair accessible? When I was there were no elevators or ramps at most smaller stations and the stairways were quite steep.
…Well getting down the stairs wouldn’t be a problem.
if you have a wheelchair you get dedicated parking spaces anyway. what’s your problem? what are you talking about?
And those with the proper credentials can be e excepted.
There are also valid reasons for disabled people to be against SUVs, and the abundance of cars in general: pollution creates disabilities, and so much pollution comes from car tyres. I know, because I have a disability that’s associated with said pollution, and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone else so I really hope we can replace car use with less polluting methods as soon as possible. And then there’s the more physical way: cars crashing into people also creates disabilities. If you’re disabled, you’re probably more likely to have sympathy for all the other disabilities that cars contribute to creating, and would prefer if SUVs and cars were replaced by other methods.
There ARE valid reasons for SUVs.
no. not really.
Professionals who need something with storage space for work use vans.
People who need to also transport a wheelchair will use a different car, that is not terribly to get in and out of.
SUVs have 0 reasons to exist, especially outside the US
The prices will apply to vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles.
Seems like it applies to vans as well
fair enough. But at that point it’s basically another business expense.
SUVs don’t really do much in the area of “hauling stuff around”. They are really really bad at it, if you compare it to normal transporters
People who need to also transport a wheelchair will use a different car, that is not terribly to get in and out of.
A car most likely wouldn’t work for many wheelchair users who drive because they essentially need something they can just get them and their chair lifted directly into, lock their wheels down and start driving. But that doesn’t require an SUV. A van would work too. That’s what a friend of mine in high school drove.
I’m not really understanding, what makes the US different in this regard?
the onyl reason they exist in the US is because a regulations loophole.
The EU doesn’t have that loophole, so SUVs don’t even have that reason to exist. Which you can see, as SUVs are super rare in the EU, while they top all car sales ranks in the US in the last couple years
SUVs are not super rare in the EU (unfortunately). They are pretty common in cities and cause a lot of accidents.
SUVs and crossovers are most popular cars in Europe.
Here’s a French source, coincidentally: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/09/14/suvs-now-dominate-european-car-market_6135326_19.html
Til that model y is a suv.
You didn’t notice until now?
Just looks like a slightly raised sedan to me. Shrug
Is there a c/confidentlyincorrect?
I don’t think you are right on SUVs not being a thing here. What is the legal loophole in the US about?
This covers the whole thing in detail, but there are some exceptions to light trucks in the Us that also applies to SUVs for some reason
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/jN7mSXMruEo?si=i7n-KxW7LaXXrmXf
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The US is built more for SUVs than places outside it, so they make a little bit more sense than in places like Paris.
But only a little bit more sense. They’re still obnoxious and far too big in the US.
True, lots of places (but I suppose maybe not everywhere) have really wide roads with tons of lanes so it’s easy to drive around with SUV’s, but this is generally not true in Europe where, even in large cities, often roads/lanes are narrower, making SUV’s unwieldy for those driving around them.
Then there’s the pollution aspect which I can’t address, but I imagine SUV’s pollute more on average than other cars (and probably Europe is currently being a bit more stingy on allowing this)
Have you been to Europe? Have you walked the streets of Paris? The US was built with enough space being everywhere. American roads are wider, cities are mostly built like square-grids of roads built in a time when cats existed whereas European cities emerged in the middle ages. They’re tightly packed with little extra space. Sometimes (very rarely) here there are old Cadillacs that can be rented for weddings. Seeing one of these cars on the street is an unreal experience. They’re just so huge. They don’t fit on the streets here - and those are cars from the 60s or 70s. Everything seems tiny compared to them. From a European perspective it’s really stupid to build such large vehicles as driving and parking it is much more complicated when everything is build for small cars. Now that SUVs are becoming popular here too it’s just a really annoying. Less parking space per vehicle etc. On cities like Paris - one of the tightest city on Europe this is just annoying. And i haven’t even written about fuel consumption. Paris has had huge problems with smog in recent years.
American roads are wider, cities are mostly built like square-grids of roads
And we’re paying for that, too.
The Ugly, Dangerous, and Inefficient Stroads found all over the US & Canada - Not Just Bikes
Why link the paywalled version when it’s on youtube?
First video on Nebula is free, and it has no ads.
They will be exempted, as well as residents and professionals.
Well, it shouldn’t be hard to write in an exemption just for folks with wheelchairs. It’s almost a non-issue.
I’m pretty sure disabled driver have free parking.
The truth is (at least in the USA), a vast majority of people who own SUVs don’t really need an SUV. This video explains it a lot better than I ever could: https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo
I would bet that Parisians saw the hell that the USA went through with absurdly large cars and car dependency and wish to prevent that from happening to their city, which this additional fee would help disincentivize.
If you are open to learning more, I highly suggest looking into Strong Towns, which this video series by the same creator does a great job of summarizing: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
It shows the issues that many cities put themselves in by depending on cars and proposes ways we can improve our cities for the benefit of everyone (especially the disabled).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/jN7mSXMruEo
https://www.piped.video/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Well. This makes no sense for me. How do SUVs deffer from other cars? They take only one parking lot and many SUVs are even smaller than an average car. Why not to rise parking costs for luxury cars?
RTFA
Years ago, I heard an NPR piece about a French -ologist of some kind, who was revolutionizing advertising in the States, and he mentioned a small car that consumers viewed as saying “Rape me!” We are all driving around in jacked up station wagons, because of some weird, atavistic urges to feel inviolable and cosseted.
Fundamentally, SUVs are an inefficient design for a passenger car. Even small crossovers, and I drive one myself, are inefficient relative to a station wagon offering the same volume and space for passengers and cargo.
SUVs burn relatively more gas, they use more tires, they damage roads more, they are less controllable due to higher centers of gravity, they have poorer visibility of pedestrians and cyclists, and they require shitloads of engineering just to hide their shitty performance and safety characteristics.
If you have the time (35 min), this video does a great job of explaining the distinction.
If you have even more time, I recommending looking into Strong Towns, of which the same creator summarized in this series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
This channel opened my eyes to the extremely terrible world of car dependency that we live in. I will warn you that once you know this, you will never see the world the same way again, but it’s extremely important that we know about this problems so that we can push our governments to fix them.
I would love this in Australia, all the private school soccer mums would revolt!
This whole vehicular size arms race needs to go away please.
It’s so retarded that people think they need to get bigger cars to “protect” themselves in accidents. Just feedback looping stupidity.
But how will the other people know I have money if my car isn’t huge?
The protection argument has some merit, though. I remember seeing several studies that show survival rates are bigger for the SUV inhabitants in crashes. What SUV drivers don’t know (or simply don’t care about) is that it’s survival in the detriment of smaller cars inhabitants.
Poor crash compatibility, and for reasons to do with chicken imports from Europe in the past (Not just bikes covers this), light trucks have less regulation in NA compared to cars, incentivizing the manufacturers to push them into consumers as well.
It’s shittiness all round and government is like that cat from the “bachelorette woman crying” meme.
The next “logical” step after SUVs is driving APCs in the name of safety.
already exists, armed with variety of lethal and non-lethal defense systems, up-armoured to take on anything short of 30mmAP rounds
Makes sense. The guy openly carrying weapons with the look of he is dying to use them clearly gets into less problems then the guy who doesn’t attract any attention to himself. You really want to be threatening people by just being there, that will definitely work out well for you. That’s why I carry around a matchet and scream at random people to back off
Penis enhancement
Awesome, fuck SUV’s
I came down the comment section searching for exactly this kind of argumentation. Thank you!
Yes! Fuck them! Wait…what? Why can’t i park my Peugeot e-308 there? WHAT? No! That’s not an SUV! Well…it’s 1759 Kg and therefore an SUV. This rule is utter stupidity.
1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles
There might be silly examples to find, but yours isn’t one of them.
I would look for cases where moving from petrol to hybrid pushes you over the limit. I think they should be measuring size and fuel efficiency, rather than weight.
The prices will apply to vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles.
Bmw x2 xDrive25e is a hybrid weighing 1800kg.
Bmw x2 sDrive18i is a petrol weighing 1500kg.
Both have exactly the same petrol engine. The plugin hybrid car, despite being cleaner, falls under the new parking law while the pure petrol one does not. Seems like they didn’t thought this through, and it is (again) bullshit to do this in the name of climate. They just want money.
Heavier cars cause more wear and tear on the road, increasing the road maintenance costs. They also have larger tires. Tire dust is a large component of microplastics.
Your one specific example is not the “gotcha” you think it is. Larger vehicles use more energy. That’s just physics.
You missed the part where it says 2 ton for full electric?
You can’t make an overly specific limit or car makers would adjust the specs just enough to pass the check.
If they had an exception or higher weight for hybrids, then SUVs like the Jeep renegade “hybrid” with their tiny 800 wh batteries would abuse the higher weight limit
True but you can’t deny by my example that people who invested in a more environmental friendly car are are punished for it.
This limit needs to be instituted at a country level.
For example now that the Volkswagen up/Skoda citigo/seat Mii has been put out of production, there isn’t a single car made by all the brands of the Volkswagen group that’s shorter than 4 meters.
Suck it, SUV owners in Paris.
But really, suck it every SUV owner. They’re terrible in every single way and no one can change that.
What about hybrid crossover SUVs?
They pay an additional tax for being ugly
Seriously, just because something has a battery doesn’t mean you have to pull the animators from the Jetson’s out of storage to design a future car.
Good luck defining what is and isn’t an SUV and try to enforce parking restrictions based on that.
Companies will just define their own classes to avoid this unless there is a solid measurement in either dimension or weight. If it’s weight then they will be destroyed by the media for being anti-EV and if it’s size then the whole SUV argument goes out the window
For example is Audi A8 not an SUV but Ford Puma is?
They defined it as above 1.6 tons (metric) for ICE/hybrid and 2 tons for EVs
Well that was easy.
Total outside dimensions. If it takes up more space than the typical economy car it pays the high tax. Since you seem a bit pedantic I will define it exactly:
Take the vehicle and put it in water, use weights if needed to submerge it. Measure the displaced water. If that value is above that if a typical economy car it pays a higher tax. Economy car is defined as the what an average of a poll of randomly selected people defined it to be in 2024.
I would be a little annoyed if they did this to my car in a parking tbh/j
It is for the greater good they all chant as they drop it into the pool
Always good to go back to medieval witch hunting in a pinch.
“Drop it in water, if it floats it gets extra tax!”
As an SUV owner, I agree. It tries to do too many things, so it’s not good at any of them. When we had kids, I wanted a minivan. They’re ugly, they don’t get good gas mileage, their handling is like a pregnant yak- but if you need to haul around kids and their stuff, there’s nothing better. My wife at least considered it, but we ended up with a hybrid SUV. I don’t completely hate it, but I still would rather have gotten a minivan.
Comments from @wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works are terrible in every single way and no one can change that! Good stuff, the fact that Paris classifies everything above 1,6 tonnes as an SUV, so that put’s even a measly Peugeot e-308 in that cateogry. But it’s a compact BEV! Still weighs 1759 Kg.
It’s actually 2 tons for evs specifically to account for that.
Parisians hate their fellow countrymen almost as much as they hate Americans.
This has to be the most American take of the week
Car-brain plus assuming the french think about them, that’s some top tier copium
Nah, I’ve spent some time in Paris.
That doesn’t improve your take lol
Parisians don’t give a shit about Americans one way or the other. I was just there and everyone was nice to me like they are to everyone else.
It’s so weird how there’s this stereotype about French people hating Americans when people seem to have forgotten that Republicans once hated the French so much (for daring to not join America in a war) that they changed ‘French fries’ to ‘freedom fries’ for a while. And then there’s the bullshit “France always surrenders” meme that so many Americans believe. The French military is fucking fierce.
In my experience, it’s Americans who hate the French a lot more than French people hating Americans.
In my experience, the French who hate the Americans are the ones who travel. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from there
And we wear
Canadian flags
When we travel
On our bags
'Cause we are Americans (ah yeah!)
– Corky and the Juice Pigs, Americans
Wrong thread?
Maybe it’s because the MINI Countryman SUV is a UK brand manufactured by a German car company…
Bruh, when you get a SUV/truck to drive around, you’re declaring war on everyone else. It’s literally an arms race.
While this is great, someone who doesnt mind paying a 100k for a car wont mind the extra fees.
What would really change the game is changing existing parking spaces to fixed size parking spaces and if your over that you get towed.
That would mean they have to park their car somewhere more remote which would incentisize not buying huge cars to begin with
I can’t speak for Parisians, but here in the us my experience is that it’s the people who drove the big cars who bitch the most about the price of gas.
So the added cost would definitely be a disincentive.
There’s a ridiculous thing in the US that Europeans probably don’t know about called “rolling coal,” where people in big pickup trucks that they never use for hauling anything because it would scrape the bed modify their truck to belch out a huge cloud of black smoke on demand.
I have a Prius. They love doing it to me, because of course a hybrid that still uses gas must mean that I’m one-a them commie tree-hugging hippies. They probably pay as much in gas to do it once as it would take to get my car to go 5-10 miles. And they’re the ones putting Biden ‘I did that’ stickers next to gas pumps when gas prices go up.
Hey rednecks, you know what you have to do to not worry much about gas prices? Buy a fuel-efficient car.
Oh we know, we’ve seen the videos.
We drive a Toyota Yaris and bitch about the price of gas.
While this is great, someone who doesnt mind paying a 100k for a car wont mind the extra fees.
Not just that, it removes the… let’s call it ‘shame factor’. Some people that would feel bad about driving big, polluting cars in the city now will feel perfectly justified: they are paying extra for the privilege. This will not reduce the number of cars and likely will increase it. It’s simply a bad policy. As you said, number of parking spots for big cars should be reduced each year putting greater and greater pressure on the owners to get rid of them.
It’s a gentle nudge.
If you’re picking a car, and didn’t think about it very much, something like paying more for parking might well nudge you to a smaller car.
And it means when those 100k cars go on the second hand market for 20k a few years later, the people paying that much will not be happy with the fees.On a slight tangent, range rovers are being targeted by criminals. To the point where RR ups the security, and it’s worked around in a month or so.
This has lead to insurance premiums going way up. And while there are a few people just choking down the payments, others are switching away from RR, or from SUVs entirely.
It doesn’t put every customer off, but it certainly affects a chunk.Not saying this is what you’re saying, but the average french SUV doesn’t cost 100k. In-laws bought one almost new for 15k. They’re not poor, but definitely not rich, and would think twice about buying one next time if it means they pay more for parking.
15k seems like a Dacia Duster. That isn’t considered a SUV according to the limits of that law (1400 kg)
It’s more to limit those useless monsters like the range Rovers
Is a 1401kg 5 door EV considered an SUV?
For electric vehicles the weight needs to be over 2000kg in order to be considered a SUV
It’s an Opel something, as I said I’m not an expert in shitty cars 😁
i guess it’s an opel mokka, which is a fatter opel corsa with the same specs except being heavier and less efficient
15k for an almost new SUV? I think you are probably confusing a CUV with an SUV
15k € used. The (french) car dealer called the car a SUV, but I’ll admit I’m not an expert.
But even if you call that something different, there aren’t a lot of 100k SUVs in France, I can tell you that.
French people will drive a 20 year old kangoo and be proud of it. I know because that is me.
So they made having an SUV a money flex?
It already is?
