A Greens councillor in Sydney is calling for parking fees to be tripled for SUVs, calling them “big problems, big polluters, [and] big killers”.
In a TikTok video with fellow councillor Olivia Barlow, Councillor Matthew Thompson announced he will introduce a motion at today’s City of Sydney council meeting calling for parking fees to be tripled.
This would apply to “the most dangerous, polluting SUVs… to disincentivise their use on our roads”.
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The current maximum hourly parking rate in Sydney is $8.20 an hour, so this would force owners of affected SUVs to cough up $24.60/hour.
“It’s bold, and the petrol-guzzling nut jobs over at The Daily Telegraph are going to hate it, but other global cities such as Paris have already tripled parking fees for SUVs to huge success and popularity. It’s time we joined them,” he said in his TikTok.
“As bigger, dirtier cars get rolled out onto the road, the gains that we’ve made from switching to electric vehicles are being rapidly undone.
“They’re also real dangerous, with their size and weight meaning they’re way more likely to kill a pedestrian or cyclist in a collision.”
In the video, the Greens councillor also claims that a child is eight times more likely to be killed if hit by an SUV rather than a passenger car (per a University of Illinois study in 2022) and that if SUVs were a country, they’d be the fifth-largest source of CO2 emissions in the world (per the International Energy Agency last year).
He also cited sales data showing that over half – or 57 per cent – of new vehicles sold last year in Australia were SUVs.
In his notice of motion, Cr Thompson also notes “heavier vehicles increase damage on inner-city roads, thereby increasing maintenance costs on roads, with the largest SUVs doing 16 times more damage than small cars on Australian roads”.
“The rise of bigger, heavier, dirtier SUVs is wiping out the climate gains from the switch to electric vehicles,” the notice continues, “and the transport sector is projected to become the biggest source of emissions by 2030.”
What Cr. Thompson doesn’t mention, however, is that the term SUV applies to everything from a hulking Toyota LandCruiser or Nissan Patrol down to vehicles like the Jeep Avenger and Mazda CX-3 which are smaller than a typical hatchback.
The councillor doesn’t specify whether all SUVs would be impacted by this change. In the notice of motion, he calls on the Chief Executive Officer to “investigate and report back on the possibility of instituting a Paris-style system imposing higher rates for parking larger and heavier vehicles such as SUVs, including the potential to triple the cost of parking for the heaviest, most polluting, dangerous and bulky vehicles”.
Despite increasing criticism of full-size pickup trucks, the councillor makes no explicit mention of utes in either his video or notice of motion.
He also says the tripling of parking fees wouldn’t apply to tradespeople or those who need their vehicles for accessibility reasons.
Cr Thompson has called on state and federal governments to also help reverse the trend towards SUVs.
“Until they find the courage to push back against big manufacturers, it’s on us at the local level to show real leadership and keep our streets safe,” he said.
Last year, Paris tripled parking fees for petrol and hybrid cars, as well as SUVs weighing more than 1600kg and electric vehicles (EVs) weighing 2000kg or more.
Residents are exempted from the increased fees, as are certain workers such as emergency services personnel.
Similar penalties against heavier vehicles have also been proposed in Melbourne.