On February 4, David Belliard, deputy (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts) in charge of mobility and roads at Paris City Hall, is exultant: Parisians have voted in favor of an increased price for parking heavy vehicles, SUVs, 4 × 4s and sedans, alongside public roads. “We want people who have these very big cars to go underground”, punctuates the chosen one on the BFM-TV set. Please therefore use paid public parking. “The objective of a growing number of metropolises is to contain their numbers in public spaces and to get rid of the “sucker” cars which clutter them all year round”develops Jean-François Esnault, director of the Flowbird group’s parking activity for France, who will manage the platform in Lyon, a pioneering city on the subject.
Does the hunt for cars in big cities signal the end of a golden age for their allies, the parking lots? In reality, players in this market have made strength out of a growing number of constraints. The increases voted in Paris and Lyon? Rather good news, because they have spaces in the basement and on the upper floors for the most bulky motorists, and at prices which therefore become more attractive. “The parks under construction [souterrains, en élévation ou en enclos] maintain identical pricing for all vehicles and have the capacity to accommodate this clientele”, confirms Jean-Laurent Dirx, president of the National Federation of Parking Professions (FNMS) and the SAGS parking group. In addition, some standards have had a windfall effect.
Adopted in 2014, the law for the modernization of territorial public action and the affirmation of metropolises, known as the “Maptam law”, caused a small revolution after the entry into force, in 2018, of the component which enabled some 800 communities to decriminalize and decentralize paid on-street parking. Many have delegated the monitoring and collection of “post-parking passes”, which replace fines, to a quartet made up of Indigo, Q-Park, Transdev and SAGS.
Above all, the hunt for cars on the roads is far from over. Of some 800,000 spaces in the works, nearly 575,000 still occupy the edge of the traffic lanes. This public space is thus 80% taken up to serve the needs of motorists. “It’s the elephant in the room in an increasingly contested territory, thermal cars or not”describes Emmanuel Perrin, mobility strategy and services project director at the Center for Studies and Expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility and Development (Cerema), which supports communities towards the ecological transition.
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