Owners of gas-guzzling, high-polluting cars in England are bracing themselves for another attack on their wallets. Lambeth council in London is the latest area to link parking fees to a car’s emissions and it looks like the idea could soon be rolled out across much of the country.
Instead of one fixed charge per hour of parking, drivers in Lambeth now face 26 different charges, the rates differing according to how much CO2 the vehicle produces and whether it runs on diesel (which incurs a surcharge), petrol or electricity.
The new tariff system means that a driver in a really green car might pay only £6.30 ($8.08) to park for an hour near Waterloo Station, The Observer reports, but anyone rocking up in something from the filthy end of the spectrum will be stung for £13.23 ($16.96).
Predictably, the new fee structure has split opinion in the area. Drivers of electric cars are understandably supportive of the idea both because they come off well financially under the new scheme, and also because they believe it will cut the number of dirty cars in Lambeth.
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“Climate change is here and it’s going to be painful,” Gill Acham, 59, a Nissan Leaf-driving school teacher, told The Observer. “We have to change our ways.”
But others the newspaper spoke to thought the scheme would penalize ordinary drivers who couldn’t afford to upgrade to a greener car, and that it wasn’t being supported by improvements in public transport infrastructure.
Lambeth is now one of eight London councils levying parking fees according to a car’s CO2 output. And other regions far away from London, including Bath and North Somerset in the south west of England, are also said to be interested in rolling out similar schemes, which are made possible by modern parking app technology. Companies such as Ringo and PayByPhone that run these apps can cross-reference a car’s registration details with the CO2 output and adjust the parking fee accordingly.