Use more space, pay more for parking. That’s the simple idea being implemented in part of Montreal as the area joins a small but growing list of places trying to rein in the biggest and most polluting private vehicles.
The council in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, the third most populous borough in Montreal, passed the new rules in May. For parking permits effective at the start of July, it will cost more for the sort of SUV or pick-up truck increasingly common on Canadian roads than for a hatchback or sedan.
“Bigger cars are more dangerous and they take a toll on the infrastructure, on the roads,” borough Mayor François Limoges said in an interview. “As a borough, our power is on the parking. So we decided to send a message that bigger cars have a price.”
The new rules replace one that priced parking permits according to engine size. The mayor said that this system was no longer sufficient, explaining that large vehicles can have smaller motors than before because of advancing technology. The new rules are based on weight, using that as a rough indicator of size.
Owners of the lightest gas-powered vehicles will pay $115 for a parking permit while those with the heaviest will pay $205 – a nearly 80-per-cent premium. There are also two intermediate levels. The costs are the same for electric vehicle parking permits but the weight thresholds are set higher. Mr. Limoges explained that this was because the use of weight as a proxy for size wasn’t as straightforward with EVs, which have heavy batteries.
Around North America, other jurisdictions are also reckoning with the collateral damage of increasingly large vehicles. The average weight of a vehicle has gone up by about 25 per cent since 1980, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with a range of impacts.
Several safety concerns are attributed to larger vehicles. Speed bumps and curbs became less of a deterrent as vehicles grew. Larger vehicles with higher grilles are more dangerous to those on foot, striking them in the chest instead of the legs, while giving drivers less ability to see what’s directly in front of them.
Larger vehicles generate more tailpipe emissions, clashing with climate change goals implemented by many cities. Heavier vehicles, including EVs, produce more particulate matter from tires and brake pads wearing during use.
There are also infrastructure effects. Roads need more frequent repairs and parking garages can struggle to accommodate larger vehicles. Local media reports said that the weight of the vehicles was one factor being explored as the cause of a fatal parking garage collapse in Manhattan in April.
And larger vehicles take up more space on the road, which can worsen congestion. Research cited during the debate in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie noted that the borough had effectively lost as many as 10,000 street parking spaces as vehicles grew.
Few politicians have been willing to push back against the swelling heft of vehicles that are clearly popular. They amounted to 82 per cent of sales last year, according to Statistics Canada. But a handful of North American jurisdictions are making moves to discourage the most intrusive types of vehicle.
Council in Saguenay, Que., voted unanimously in March to reserve some parking spots downtown in the borough of Chicoutimi for small cars. The councillor who proposed the idea, Mireille Jean, did not respond to requests for interview. But her motion argued that large vehicles parking in these spots worsened traffic and raised safety risks, impeding the sight-lines of drivers and pedestrians.
Also in March, the California legislature passed a bill that mandates study of the relationship between vehicle weight and injuries to those on foot and bike, as well as damage to the roads, and a cost-benefit analysis of weight-based vehicle fees.
Washington, D.C., brought in new prices last October for vehicle registrations that increased sharply the cost based on weight. The cost for registering a small car remained the same but it rose by 50 to 60 per cent for those registering heavier private vehicles. Commercial vehicles were largely unaffected, with only the very biggest becoming markedly more expensive to register. The councillor who championed the increase cited safety and the environment as reasons to make the change.
“A lot of our member cities are looking at D.C. and seeing what the effect might be,” said Alex Engel, the spokesman for the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which counts a number of Canadian municipalities among its ranks.
“D.C. is interesting because they saw a point of reference that they control, to try to create better outcomes. And I think we’re all looking to see what the effect of that might be, and whether it does in fact nudge people to take different options and choose a different size of vehicle.”
His organization has also been pushing for automotive safety ratings to take into account the risk to people who might be hit, which would give purchasers of large vehicles a truer understanding of the danger their choice poses.
Moves to link cost with vehicle impact have not always been successful.
In 2021, Vancouver proposed charging more for a permit to park new vehicles with large engines, an element of its climate resilience plan. But the concept, which was part of an idea for charging city-wide for parking permits, proved too contentious. Then-mayor Kennedy Stewart eventually withdrew his support for the plan, citing the impact on lower-income residents.
In Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, the mayor hopes other municipalities follow his borough’s lead, and that higher levels of government will look to tax bigger vehicles more. And he has no apology for what he said was starting a conversation about size-pricing.
“They need a truck, we don’t forbid them to own one, we just say that there’s a price there,” Mr. Limoges said.
Oliver Moore