The city police should consistently punish drivers who do not park their large vehicles exactly in the parking space.
With its cute body and distinctive nose, the “Countryman” is unmistakably a Mini. But there is nothing really “mini” about the latest version of the British classic car from 1959. The “Countryman” is around 4.5 meters long, over 2 meters wide and, in the electric version, weighs 2 tons.
The modern Mini is so “maxi” that it even comes with a warning: “If you have a garage, you want to make sure your Mini fits in it,” the manufacturer writes on its website. This warning would not have been necessary with the original version, which was 3 meters long and 1.4 meters wide.
Just like with the Mini, almost all manufacturers have experienced this in recent years. Their cars have increased in sales. According to a study from which the BBC quotedthe lateral growth is about 0.5 centimeters per year.
The trend towards pumped-up cars has also been reflected in the standards of the Swiss Association of Road and Traffic Professionals (VSS). Since 2021, the VSS has been assuming a car width of 1 meter 85 when planning parking spaces – previously it was 5 centimeters less. The standard length is 4 meters 90. Almost 90 percent of the cars on Swiss roads are covered by these dimensions, the VSS writes in response to a request from the NZZ.
Of 13 cars, only 2 were parked correctly
The big cars also take up a lot of space in politics. In red-green circles, SUVs are seen as symbols of excessive consumption and environmentally harmful behavior. Climate activists often organize nightly air-release tours through neighborhood streets, targeting SUVs. This is despite the fact that the large vehicles are often emission-free electric cars.
In the Zurich municipal parliament, the SP and AL factions have now parked an anti-SUV postulate. The city council should examine how the trend towards wider cars in Zurich can be broken.
The spearhead of the anti-car state power is supposed to be the very institution that has to endure the most criticism from the Red-Green coalition in other matters: the police.
Up to now, the city police have been quite generous with cars that are not parked correctly. Only when one of the wheels protrudes more than halfway out of the parking space will a fine be issued, the city’s security department told the NZZ in February.
SP and AL are demanding that this tolerance should soon be over. The police should pull out the fine block as soon as cars are not parked completely within the markings of a parking space. In addition, there should be more checks outside of the parking fee periods.
Such a strict interpretation of the rules would probably affect a lot of drivers, as a quick look one afternoon in Zurich’s Seefeld shows: Of thirteen cars in a randomly selected side street, only two were parked in such a way that not even a part of the tire touched the white line from the inside.
Interestingly, the vehicles that were parked somewhat imprecisely were not SUVs, but rather smaller and older models. They lack what is standard in many modern and expensive cars: assistance systems and 360-degree cameras that can be used to perfectly park even 2-meter-wide SUVs – even fully automatically if desired.
The SP and the AL write that drivers should be warned in advance of the stricter interpretation of the rules so that there are no surprises.
Re-education for drivers
The two left-wing parties are not only calling for stricter controls on parking violations. The streetscape is also to change. On multi-lane roads, the outer lanes are to be marked more narrowly and only permitted for narrow vehicles. This means that an original Mini without a catalytic converter would be allowed to drive through there at any time, but not a fully electric “Countryman” from 2024.
The postulate also calls for a campaign to make drivers aware of the need to maintain a minimum distance when overtaking or crossing bicycles.
The applicants do not seem to have noticed that these two final objectives, artificially narrowed streets and safe overtaking of bicycles, may contradict each other.
Finally, the proposal also suggests that owners of heavy and wide vehicles should pay higher parking fees – this will be discussed in Parliament as part of another bill.
There is no single standard for parking spaces
There is no standard size for parking spaces. The VSS association states that a parking space in a parking garage that is arranged perpendicular to the direction of travel can be between 2.50 and 2.80 meters wide. The size depends on how much space is available to drive into the parking space. The narrower the driveway, the wider the parking space. There are also surcharges for the size of the spaces for obstacles such as walls or pillars in the underground car park.
Some parking garages have now painted special extra-large parking spaces for their SUV customers. The Hohe Promenade parking garage on Rämistrasse in Zurich, for example, has dedicated its entire fourth floor to XXL spaces. There are 95 of them. The wide spaces are not just intended for the “evil” SUVs, but also for families – and for wheelchair users.
