It is so awesome to see how so many European cities are calming traffic.
For americans who haven't visited in 10-15 years, the difference is mindblowing, it's something you _feel_. (E.g. brussels, paris, London, many many smaller ones). It's something I hadn't been able to imagine, the airiness, the quiet at night, how relaxed it is, ... unreal.
Interesting that your perspective helped me understand why I feel different whenever I return to London from my US travels. I get a sense of relief that isn't related to being back home.
That said I've seen quite a few people here trying to stuff their oversized SUVs into streets that just weren't made for them. But they insist. I can only wish that we had the regulatory gonads to do the same as Paris is announcing!
wait what? London streets are streams of cars moving very. very. slowly. it's definitely discouraging to have and use a car there but its not like there isn't a ton of traffic.
Left the US eleven years ago and every time I go back to stroadsville USA I HATE it. I can't imagine my kids walking there. Even the "good" cities are horrendously bad.
I've never encountered the term 'stroad' until I watched videos from an urban-planning-related YouTube channel, NotJustBikes, https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes .
I dream of anything even remotely like this, but that would NEVER fly here. The middle class is absolutely in love with their fucking SUVs and trucks. We'd sooner get Basic Income than any regulation that aims at those bloated class signifiers.
If only this were the problem here...I temporarily live in a small town in the American South and the mega-pickup truck thing is the most childish thing I have ever seen.
Note that this is not some side street - it's a busy two-way thoroughfare.
Despite this we are being inundated by larger and larger vehicles. It used to be that Dodge Rams and such were a novelty that had to be imported privately. Now they are common at the city's car dealerships. I refuse to believe that people are buying these for their 'practicality'.
In the Netherlands they're getting pretty common. In theory the taxes make them expensive to own but in reality they're always registered as businesses vehicles (the reg starts with a V) and they pay less tax than a Honda civic. You're only supposed to do 500 km or less of personal driving a year but the rule is ignored.
I haave had a Babboe City (without an e-assist) [0] in the NYC for ~8 years -- and mostly leave it in storage in the NYC suburbs. It's a heavy beast without the an e-assist, and the few times I've had it in NYC & parked it (during daylight hours), people have left trash in it. I can't fathom leaving a ~$6,000 bike locked outdoors overnight, given what happens to cheaper bikes in NYC [1]. I'd love to use it more, but it's impractical.
Minivans are much more practical: generally more cargo space, lower bed, higher mileage, less roll-over risk, better front visibility (so less chance of running over your kids in the driveway), good amenities. The Toyota Sienna comes in a 4WD variant too, and has plenty of power.
Genuinely, it hink they're an imagined practicality. We have a conventional family, conventional arrangements, and granted, I'd loath to buy an suv, out of spite I guess, but we've never been in a situation where our old small normal car isn't sufficient. We do all the things normal people do too.
Dad with wife, two kids, and a dog here. We are a one car family, and we intend to stay that way due to pretty real parking constraints.
We tried to hold out for as long as we could without an SUV. Ultimately, taking a week long trip with the family became focused around space management, having to play packing tetris and telling my wife "I don't think we have space for the pack and play". Sure we made it work, but it was stressful.
We got a 3 row SUV (3rd row collapses), and the additional space is just fantastic when it comes to packing. And when the cousins or grandparents are in town, the 3rd row comes in handy.
What about a minivan? All of my siblings with kids use them, and I genuinely think you can fit more cargo in them. My parents take the seats out, and use it to transport stuff from the hardware store, it can a bunch of kids, etc.
I recently rented a car for a camping trip, and they only had minivans - we had a ton of room to fit everything. Only real disadvantage is they look less "classy" than SUVs to some.
I don’t own either, but modern midsize SUVs and Minivans (for instance, a Honda Pilot and Odyssey) are essentially the same thing with different styling. I don’t get why folks think minivans are significantly better from an environmental, safety or utility point of view.
Lower clearance mainly, mean lower gravity center, generally more space (not always) and better front visibility (The A-pillar in newer minivans are a bit worse than SUVs, so point for them at least).
Lower clearance is really, really nice. 95% of deathly accidents involve a single car that went out of control, that's why road death increase with the %age of SUVs in a country despite better tech.
Wouldn’t a people carrier have been adequate? I don’t think people have an issue with the desire for interior space for families, it’s more an issue with the unnecessary extra size and weight brought on by the offroadesque styling
I'm not familiar with the term "people carrier", sorry. Is this like a minivan?
If so, many minivans are ~similar in size, weight, and capacity to modern SUVs (not all SUVs are a Chevy Suburban :-)). For example, you can compare the Honda Odyssey to the Mazda CX9 and the specs are actually not too different:
Mazda CX9: weight: 4,409lbs, 199″ L x 78″ W x 68″ H
A minivan allows much easier ingress, egress with large doors. Also, there are no SUVs with 8 seats that I know of. There are minivans with AWD or even limited 4WD. But they definitely carry social stigma and don't look sporty. That's important for a lot of people, I guess.
Also, wheel base and weight are not the best way to compare overall utility of a vehicle.
A lot of modern SUVs are actually pretty similar in specs to minivans:
Mazda CX9: weight: 4,409lbs, 199″ L x 78″ W x 68″ H
Honda Odyssey: 4,482lbs, 205″ L x 79″ W x 70″ H
For us, it mostly boiled down to us needing to periodically drive in snowy conditions. Obviously an SUV is not a magical vehicle for wintry conditions, but 4wd is big advantage.
Station wagons are tanky; minivans are homely and underpowered. So lots of people get SUVs. It’s easier to fit things in the trunk when shopping IKEA or going skiing, sports equipment, etc. sure, it is possible to wedge 10ft 2x4s in a sedan, but it’s easier with an SUV.
In any case, normal SUVs are not class signifiers. People drive beaters. Some are signifiers but that’s a really small segment.
I'm sorry what? Tanky compared to an overbuilt overpowered 17 foot suburban?!
The old woodies are a thing of beauty and a Mercedes estate is downright gorgeous, and would utterly SCHOOL an Escalade on cargo capacity AND fuel economy at the same time.
> minivans are homely and underpowered.
Then get a VAN, not a MINI-VAN. It's in the name dude.
> So lots of people get SUVs. It’s easier to fit things in the trunk when shopping IKEA or going skiing, sports equipment, etc. sure, it is possible to wedge 10ft 2x4s in a sedan, but it’s easier with an SUV.
I'm sorry that last statement is just laughable. Long cargo is AWFUL in an SUV unless you remove the entire rear row of seats at which point, again, you have a van. You have a tall, shitty van.
Most modern SUVs are 'underpowered' too. They take the same lame engine that goes in a non-sport family sedan and drop it in a larger, heavier car. If you want performance, you usually buy a specific type of car.
A Suburban is as much a class signifier as a G Class, just for a different class. Hell, it's in the name: it's the car of the suburban middle classes. It's the minivan for the sort of kind of person who would get a minivan but doesn't want to show they're the kind of person who would get a minivan.
It's one of those cars people refer to by name. People drive their "suburban", the neighbors have a "suburban", in the news the "suburban" will crash through the daycare, not nondescript oversized suv,...
SUV's are not practical. Trucks can be. If you find yourself needing to transport a large amount of something that is, well, filthy, you will find use in a truck. However a modern truck will make that task more difficult, because the ride height is so tall and the huge wheels require larger wheel wells which diminish the carrying capacity of the bed. The ride height also situates the bed higher, which makes loading/unloading more difficult, and creates a more unsafe situation with heavier loads like large lawn tools (higher center of gravity) than an older, shorter truck with smaller wheels would. It really is not an exaggeration to say that a 2024 Silverado is comprehensively a worse truck in basically every aspect you'd actually want a truck for than a 2004 Silverado, apart from fuel economy. But that's a lot of downsides for an additional 6MPG city, which is basically entirely down to advancements in ICE technology, which is being actively undermined by the much larger-for-absolutely-no-reason vehicle it's inside.[1]
SUV's meanwhile are just shitty versions of vans situated on truck chassis. That's literally it. Their height makes them harder to get in and out of and to load/unload cargo from. The fact that their cargo space is finished means they're less appealing to transporting shitty garden-type stuff that a truck does easily. However they're also not arranged as well as vans for their cargo space, requiring the same aforementioned oversized wheel wells, meaning they also hold less than the vans they compete with. And, despite all of that, they also by virtue of using the same chassis, the same engine, and the same suspension components, inherit the shitty fuel economy, higher maintenance costs, rollover risk, and crash incompatibility as their truck counterparts, while offering basically none of the benefits, apart from maybe towing. As long as what you're towing didn't need to be hitched to the bed anyway.
SUV's are practical for one thing: demonstrating wealth to your neighbors, and offering you better odds in a crash with another stupid SUV. Not great odds, just better odds.
1: Note that's just the EPA's figures and doesn't account for the age of the 2004 Silverado.
Edit: This is, tangentially related, why actual tradesmen not Home Depot customers cosplaying as tradesmen, have recently begin raiding the used market for pickup trucks that are actually designed to do work, not to let grown men who live in the suburbs play an imaginary role on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Or just abandoning them altogether and getting a van.
Modern SUVs are mostly not on truck chassis anymore. The body-on-frame breed of SUV is growing increasingly rare. Modern SUVs are a lot closer to larger sedans (for example, a Mazda CX5 is not remotely close to a truck).
> > Their height makes them harder to get in and out of and to load/unload cargo from.
> My Honda CR-V is much easier to get in and out of then my Honda Civic was.
With that statement GP was comparing modern pickup trucks to 20+ year old pickup trucks. And you respond by stating that an SUV is easier to get into and out of than a sedan/hatchback?
I wish I could double your karma. This comment represents the pinnacle of thought around vehicle styles and how unsound logic and manipulative sociology can create net harm in capitalist economies. Everything about modern American trucks and SUVs makes me want to vomit when I thino about it too hard.
Even if we just enforce compact parking spots it would be miles better than what we have today, you know, just like how people don't park their ICE cars on EV-only spots, that SUVs would actually don't park on spots marked as compact only.
It's amazing, I wish more cities around Europe would follow - I'm not sure how I feel about Parisian residents being exempt though. People living in Paris will have a parking permit allowing them to park on their street already, why do they also need an exemption from higher parking prices elsewhere?
> People living in Paris will have a parking permit allowing them to park on their street already, why do they also need an exemption from higher parking prices elsewhere?
My guess is that it was either the only way they could get it to pass, or because they're doing it to soak all the tourists coming in for the Olympics.
Who in the world rents an SUV (or a car for that matter) to get around Paris? Edit: best option is to park outside city limits and take public transit. Maybe that's the point.
If you want to go specifically to Paris from most places in Europe the train (preferred) or the airport are the most efficient connections, car is hard for many reasons. But if you are visiting Paris while 'en route' then yes, do as you say.
I wish Germany would follow, but well... There are a few cities in Germany that are rather progressive in that regard, but I wouldn't hold my breath for this in East Germany. :)
I checked the top 10 cars sold in the UK in 2023 and it's hard to say life is gonna change much around me by looking at the cars on that list [1]. All of the cars on that list would still be allowed and I definitely see some "big" cars there. For instance a Kia Sportage is right in the limit of what would be allowed with 1.5 tons, same with the Vauxhall Mokka and the Nissan Qashqai.
If the concern is pollution maybe it's worth it but if the aim was to improve safety for kids and for cyclists I think the limit should be much lower.
America needs to follow. Make parking cost $100/hr with fines exceeding $2-3K. I would support this. Get all of these SUV/suburban-idiots off the road.
American car companies push for large vehicles because those are exempt from strict emission standards. And the rest eventually started following because the US is the most lucrative car market in the world, even if their own country has different legislation.
Remove the loophole and everything gets back into place without any weird & local workarounds like Paris had to retreat to.
For a policy that's ostensibly designed to fight air pollution and "reclaim streets for pedestrians and cyclists", penalizing vehicle tonnage seems like a weird way of achieving it. If you want to fight air pollution, charging based on emissions like the ULEZ in London[1] seems like a much more effective way of doing so, especially since a 20 year old sedan can easily emit more air pollution than a recent SUV. As for "reclaim[ing] streets for pedestrians and cyclists", the bigger problem is arguably on-street parking itself and the space it occupies, rather than the of the cars occupying them. If you want to create more space for pedestrians and cyclists, replace on-street parking with cycling lanes or sidewalks, and the market (for parking spaces) will take care of the rest.
1. Larger vehicles pose a much greater threat to pedestrians and cyclists, both from frequency and consequence of incidents.
2. Tire emissions are more toxic than exhaust [1] and tire wear is dramatically greater on heavier vehicles. This is about air pollution in the city, not climate change globally.
> 2. Tire emissions are more toxic than exhaust [1] and tire wear is dramatically greater on heavier vehicles. This is about air pollution in the city, not climate change globally.
Is there any info on how this impacts the environmental benefits of EVs? Or is the lack of combustion still a net gain?
Trying to summarize: EVs still seem to be a net gain, but non-exhaust emissions are still a significant problem. We don't know how bad that problem really is because there's not enough research yet.
Yes, out of the city ideally, you will use cargo train. In fact, in some (french) city lorry are forbidden, only local service are permitted. The most heavy one are already forbidden on the WE, day off and summer all over France.
But then you'd need to have a viable alternative and that's a bit of a problem for 'last miles' delivery of goods. But in-city SUV traffic is entirely optional.
Particle pollution from car tires are much worse from heavy vehicles. Apparently recent research suggest that emissions tires are much larger and more dangerous than exhaust emissions.
>Tires release 100 times the amount of volatile organic compounds as a modern tailpipe, says an analyst.
If that's the case, the policy is still strange by giving electric cars a significantly higher weight limit, even though the difference in emissions is negligible.
The difference in emissions isn’t negligible: a new EV is a net positive to carbon emissions over an existing ICE in only 2 years, even assuming a dirty electric source.
Yes, that's a serious problem. And it also is interesting given the EV drivers who believe that they are improving the planet. The best way to do that is to not drive at all, or to ride a bike, not an EV which at scale is not all that much better than an ICE with the exception of tailpipe emissions (which is a big deal).
Volatile organic compounds are a very specific type of pollutant (not CO2), and much less important than CO2 and a more localized problem in the grand scheme of things.
This seems to be pretty wildly left out of the gas->electric push then?
I’m not saying it makes electrification less valuable, but rather the push for electric has very much been sold as “solving” emissions (with some minor debate about the emissions of manufacturing & supply chain)
I guess electrification is phase 1, tire compound science is going to have to be phase 2?
Yes, if this tradeff wasn't made then EVs wouldn't be subsidized as they are across the world. But in some places the local problems are larger so they let people pay for negative externalities. I can't see a problem with that. There is surely also a progressive element to this: people who drive large cars are assumed to be wealthier so able to carry more of the city/regions revenue from taxes and fees.
I just don't like having large vehicles around as a pedestrian and cyclist, anything that looks like I would get crushed under the car instead of over the hood, and don't mind them being specifically targetted/penalized.
People interested in and passionate about transportation in cities have long been warning that it doesn't solve anything if you just replace every combustion engine car with a (likely bigger) electric car, and incentives for them are wholly absurd in urban spaces.
The thing is that there are multiple things that are problems and which can have independent(and even contradictory) solutions. Like for instance - cars cause noise and pollution in cities where people live and breathe.
Solution: give large incentives for people to buy EVs instead, so you solve the noise and pollution problems(not entirely, but in a large part).
But obviously that does nothing to the lack of parking spaces, people using/not using public transit, cycling etc etc etc. It's just one of the sides of a very complex cube.
We have a VW e-UP, that fits the bill perfectly, and I honestly like it more than our 400bhp Volvo. It fits everywhere, goes 150 miles on a charge, fits us both and a child seat, Costco shopping.......honestly that's the perfect city/mixed use EV. And if only weighs 1200kg.
The e-UP is a nice little vehicle. We had an ICE one (the cheapest version) as a company runabout and it was ridiculously fuel efficient and light, the e- version wasn't for sale yet then but if it had been I'm pretty sure we would have bought one. And likely then we'd still have it today.
Yes ! I worked on the Mobilize Duo (the Twizy successor, will be available soon) and it's revolutionary. I think it may be too much for French people, It's about establishing a new way of thinking.
The car can't be purchased, only rented. It's very light and ONLY designed for urban trip.
There is also a version for light local service !
In traffic the Twizy isn't all that much better than a motorcycle, I would go for a car chassis based EV before even considering a Twizy. I also think they are way too expensive for what they offer.
To each his own. As a motorcyclist, I feel a motorcycle is better than a Twizy, but in Paris a Twizy is a lot better than a small car for navigating traffic and parking.
As a parent I wouldn't go near a motorcycle let alone ride one in traffic. When I was a kid that was different but the responsibility towards my family precludes me from taking excessive risk. The Twizy embodies excessive risk for me to a degree that I would not drive one.
You say "good heuristic", I say "half-assing it", especially when you consider a system to determine which cars are eligible for the charge would involve some sort of vehicle model database, and it would be equally easy to have the system work off of emissions rather than tonnage.
Particle emissions from tires is probably not available data by model, but it can be pretty reliably inferred from the weight of the vehicle. If you want exhaust emissions you can just take the emission values from the database by model.
Also weight is a reasonable proxy for size and hazard to pedestrians. EVs get unfairly penalized for that though (for being dense)
> penalizing vehicle tonnage seems like a weird way of achieving it
There's probably not that much variation in automobile density, so regulating those that are heavier is a good proxy for those that are larger.
And even if the number of parking spots is the same, a row of little cars people can see over and between is better than a row of big SUVs that they can't.
> a row of little cars people can see over and between is better than a row of big SUVs that they can't
An underappreciated criticism of modern vehicles.
Diminishes the visibility of and for cyclists as well.
I'm 5'11 and as a pedestrian SUVs and 'trucks' block my visibility. Not to mention that along with the 'ride height' you get a front bumper that looks designed to just flatten you (you'd be forgiven for thinking this was intentional given the fetish for 'aggressive' styling). In addition you get the added bonus of much higher headlights. Why can't we at least keep these closer to the road like on real trucks, buses, and vans?
Regulators really dropped the ball on this one. Is there actually any limit to how large a personal vehicle can get? Seems like a massive oversight due to a fixation on safety of occupants to the detriment of everyone else.
From a personal point of view, I think people who buy these bloated vehicles should consider how they would feel if their neighbours all decided minibuses were an acceptable means of personal conveyance.
Not only is it weird to argue against a price increase, then reframing the problem to something else, and then propose the market to solve that (which means more parking spaces or higher prices). But there is no market in the first place. How is it going to solve anything?
To be fair the market was so good at turning parking in to better land uses the US spent eighty years making it illegal to build... Anything, really, without oceans of parking.
For americans who haven't visited in 10-15 years, the difference is mindblowing, it's something you _feel_. (E.g. brussels, paris, London, many many smaller ones). It's something I hadn't been able to imagine, the airiness, the quiet at night, how relaxed it is, ... unreal.