Cardiff council will force drivers with larger vehicles to pay more for parking, becoming the first local authority in the UK to impose a parking premium to combat the dangers of larger vehicles.
Councillors voted on Thursday to approve a new parking plan for the city whereby owners of larger vehicles will be charged more for parking permits because their cars “take up more parking space and are a danger to other road users”.
The plan states that vehicles that weigh more than 2,400kg fully laden will be subject to a surcharge “to encourage drivers to switch to smaller vehicles”; this will later be reduced to 2,000kg for non-electric vehicles.
There has been a growing backlash against the sharp increase in large vehicles on roads, which cause more pollution and are more likely to cause fatalities if involved in a collision.
Research has shown that sports utility vehicles (SUVs), which combine features of a passenger car with an off-road vehicle, have increased from 3% to 30% of existing cars in the past two decades.
Oliver Lord, the UK head of the campaign group Clean Cities, said “other cities across the UK could learn from Cardiff’s leadership”.
“Cardiff is showing real vision by standing up to the SUV ‘carspreading’ that is taking over our streets,” he said. “It’s only fair that those driving the biggest, heaviest and most polluting vehicles pay more for the extra space and danger they bring.”
The Welsh capital is following in the footsteps of Paris, which last year tripled parking charges for SUV-style vehicles, leading to a two-thirds reduction in the number of SUVs using surface parking.
The decision in Cardiff follows a public consultation in which two-thirds (66%) of respondents said they agreed that larger vehicles should pay more for permits.
Dan De’Ath, the cabinet member for transport, said SUVs were “much larger than your average car, they produce far more wear and tear on our roads, but fundamentally if you hit a child while driving a heavy SUV the chances of that child dying are grossly inflated”.
He said: “We don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask people driving those kinds of vehicles to pay a little bit more for road wear and the extra space they take up. We’re not talking about SUV-shaped cars, we’re talking about very heavy American-style vehicles.
“It’s not about banning things, it’s about gently encouraging behaviour change.”
