Six out of 10 say 4x4 drivers should pay more for city parking

Six out of 10 people believe that drivers of 4x4s and other large cars should pay more to park in city centres, according to new research.

April’s Startline Used Car Tracker also shows that 37% say such vehicles are too big for city streets and the same percentage that they are too polluting.

And just over a fifth (22%) think that charging more money will help to dissuade drivers from bringing these vehicles into urban areas.

Paul Burgess, CEO at Startline Motor Finance, said: “We asked this question following news that parking charges in Paris have been trebled for any vehicle weighing more than 1.6 tonnes and wanted to see whether there was an appetite for similar moves here in the UK.

“The answer very much appears to be yes, with a strong majority believing that drivers of big 4x4s and other large cars should be paying more. There seems to be a pretty common view that they are oversized and generally unpopular.”

However, 28% of those surveyed believe that all private cars should be treated the same in cities, 15% that parking spaces should be made bigger for all cars, and 11% that higher charges won’t affect these drivers.

Burgess added: “It’s a reasonable point to make that anyone who can afford to be driving a car of that size may have less of an issue with paying higher parking fees. However, the responses in our research do raise a wider question about the degree to which these cars may be viewed less favourably for use in cities.”

The Startline Used Car Tracker is compiled monthly for Startline Motor Finance by APD Global Research. This time, 302 consumers and 64 dealers were questioned.