Giant American-style utes and SUVs may soon be charged higher parking fees in a dozen Melbourne suburbs after a council threw its support behind plans to tax the controversial vehicles off city roads.
Super-sized SUVs and pick-up trucks like the Ford F-150, RAM 1500 and Land Rover Defender have exploded in popularity in Australia in recent years but sparked backlash from some motorists who say the vehicles are clogging roads and parking spaces not designed for them.
Yarra City Council on Tuesday night unanimously backed a motion by Greens Councillor Sophie Wade to investigate “ways to make travelling on Yarra’s streets more equitable and discourage large and heavy vehicles on Yarra’s streets, including by considering proportionate parking fees based on a vehicle’s size”.
“The key reason I’ve put this forward tonight is to do with safety,” Cr Wade told the meeting.
“It’s really a matter of one person’s right to drive whatever they want trumping everyone else’s right to [safety] on the street, and I don’t think that’s a compromise we should be willing to make.”
She said she had been inspired by residents of Paris, who voted last month to triple the cost of parking for SUVs compared to standard-sized cars, from €6 ($9.90) an hour in the city centre to €18 ($29.70).
Other French cities such as Lyon have implemented similar policies, while London Mayor Sadiq Khan has suggested the UK capital may follow suit.
If the plans go ahead, Yarra City Council — which takes in the inner eastern and northern suburbs of Abbotsford, Alphington, Burnley, Carlton North, Clifton Hill, Collingwood, Cremorne, Fairfield, Fitzroy, Fitzroy North, Princes Hill and Richmond — would be the first jurisdiction in Australia to crack down on popular cars derided by critics as “Yank Tanks”.
“Parking fees aren’t the only way to deal with it — I encourage the state and federal government to take action on this as well, but parking is the lever … in front of us and I suggest to my colleagues we follow Paris’ lead,” Cr Wade said.
Councillor Stephen Jolly, who moved several amendments calling for more data, said that “if you live in Fitzroy or Collingwood or Richmond and you buy a Hummer you’re an absolute idiot and you need to be dealt with”.
But he noted that Yarra was “the most progressive council in Australia” and “I’m sure the stats would prove that we have fewer oversized vehicles … than any other municipality in Victoria”.
“We need to know how many SUVs, RAMs, Defenders, Hummers are on the streets of Yarra, how many accidents are coming from these vehicles, how many fines are we charging as a result of a large oversized vehicle taking two parking spots,” he said.
Cr Jolly warned, however, that Yarra supported high-rise “urban consolidation” and construction sites brought tradies with utes.
He added that “almost everyone who owns a home or rents has a tradie come at least once”, and similarly that many public housing residents in Yarra worked blue-collar jobs in the outer suburbs.
“We need to ensure our most vulnerable, disadvantaged residents are not disadvantaged by some action we take here,” he said. “I think that’s entirely possible to do, but we need to walk into it with a social justice perspective as well as environmental perspective.”
Councillor Herschel Landes agreed it was “important to discourage” large vehicles on roads not designed for them.
Mayor Edward Crossland recounted watching one drive down a narrow dead-end street in Cremorne recently where it “had to do an eight-point turn” to get back out.
“There simply is not the room to accommodate it,” he said.
Several members of the public also spoke in favour of the motion.
One man said the plan would help “more accurately account for the negative externalities of owning such a vehicle”.
Local volunteer Alex Lamb commended the council for “sparking a national conversation about this following Paris which sparked a global conversation”.
“It’s really concerning the size of vehicles has been growing every year, we need to put the brakes on that,” she said. “As the socialist mayor of Paris said, it is a social justice issue. The fact is these cars do come at a cost.”
Cr Wade’s motion moved that council note “the dangers posed by the increasing size and weight of vehicles on Australian streets, including vehicles like the RAM and Defender”.
Those include that “car crashes are now the leading cause of death for Australian children”, children are “eight times more likely to die when hit by a SUV compared to a normal passenger car”, that “pedestrian deaths have stayed stable while the road toll has trended downwards” and “larger cars are more polluting and have a greater climate impact … if SUVs were a country, they would rank as the sixth most polluting in the world”.
It recommended that “a report be prepared for a Councillor workshop for later this calendar year to investigate ways to make travelling on Yarra’s streets more equitable and discourage large and heavy vehicles on Yarra’s streets, including by considering proportionate parking fees based on a vehicle’s size”.
The motion added that “any investigation and consultation should consider appropriate caveats” such as electric vehicles and people with disabilities, and options for directing funding to projects that “make walking safer” such as the New Deal for Schools program, announced in the 2023-24 budget, which aims to increase the number of children walking, cycling and scooting to school.
Earlier in the meeting, during public comment on the 10-year Transport Action Plan, some disgruntled residents and business owners complained that the council had progressively removed parking spaces in favour of bicycle lanes.
“Do you expect families to ride bikes during winter and go shopping?” one man asked.
“Why do you put this added pressure on the residents of the City of Yarra? Life is hard enough as it is, and not being able to go home and find a car spot is having negative effect. You’re single-handedly taking away the right of residents to function as normal human beings.”
Mary Osman, general manager of city sustainability and strategy, replied that there were approximately 45,000 car parking spaces across Yarra and “we believe less than 1 per cent have been affected by the creation of bicycle lanes”.
NSW Greens transport spokeswoman Cate Faehrmann told The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday that “the size of SUVs is getting ridiculous” and backed measures to discourage their use when not required for genuine work.
“Big SUVs are taking up a lot more road space, including when they’re parked, so if higher parking fees make a few drivers catch the train or ride their bike instead then bring it on,” she told the newspaper.
Randwick Greens Mayor Philipa Veitch told the newspaper she was open to all options to discourage oversized SUVs which “are clogging up our roads and are a menace for pedestrians and cyclists”.
But Cumberland City Councillor Steve Christou had defended the large vehicles, which he said were “very popular out our way in the western suburbs”.
“Trying to tax large SUVs and work vehicles is a horrendous idea in a cost-of-living crisis where tradespeople, small business owners and the rest of the population is struggling to pay mortgage bills and put food on the table to feed their children,” he said on Monday.
“You’re taking away people’s livelihoods by charging higher fees and taxes and parking rates. All of this scare campaign about climate catastrophe … the reality is banning these utes is not going to solve any issue whatsoever other than to make the Greens climate catastrophists happy.”
The former Cumberland Mayor said he acknowledged that the vehicles were large but and “we need to cater to these vehicles when we create parking spaces”.
Standards Australia last year proposed increasing the length of off-street parking spaces by 20 centimetres, from 5.4 metres to 5.6 metres, to fit Australia’s increasingly bigger cars.
“The reality they do serve a purpose for tradies and people that use them to run their business or use them on construction sites,” Cr Christou said.
“Admitting some people just drive them for recreational purposes, you cannot escape the fact they are primarily used to commute to work. The reality is a lot of the tradespeople and subcontractors are based in western Sydney.”
Paul Maric, co-founder of CarExpert.com.au, said Australian councils were “just trying for a money grab here”.
“They’re going for what I call woke-topia, this woke utopia where no one drives anywhere, everyone’s on bicycles or driving around in tiny electric vehicles,” he said.
“That’s what some Greens Senator might want, but in reality, though, people are driving SUVs and dual-cab utes, they’re the best-selling cars in the country, and they want to increase costs on them just to meet some target.”
Rolling out such a system could also be complex and expensive.
“Implementing a policy of this nature would be challenging and problematic from an infrastructure and charging point of view,” NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury said.
“There are more direct and effective ways to reduce carbon emissions.”
The Sydney YIMBY lobby group has backed the proposal, however, saying it would “make people think twice” about whether they have a “genuine reason” for owning such a large vehicle in the city. Erin Riley, deputy chair of Sydney YIMBY, said the “overarching belief is that cities are for people and that we need to design cities that are good places for people to live”.
“We know the really huge cars and trucks, when people are involved in accidents they’re more likely to be seriously hurt and killed, we know they do more damage to infrastructure and take up more public and shared space,” she said.
“So generally we support policies that would make people think twice about whether they need a vehicle that large, particularly in cities.”
frank.chung@news.com.au