Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter January 2025
The UK, like much of Europe and increasingly the world, has an SUV problem. Pushed by glossy advertising and enabled by weak regulation, Sports Utility Vehicles have surged from a rarity to over half of new car registrations.
The need for such vehicles has always been questionable, especially in a city like London. Except for a few farmers and construction workers, who really needs to drive a two- or even three-tonne car on a daily basis? But inappropriateness is not the end of it. Large SUVs are, because of their size, shape and weight, more dangerous to other road users and more polluting. In short, the rise of the SUV has a social cost ultimately measurable in lives.
Despite this seemingly obvious fact, SUVs are the elephant in the room, with policymakers almost entirely silent on the issue for two decades. A new alliance of organisations hopes to change that. The SUV Alliance is made up of sustainable transport organisations, road safety campaigners and environmental groups. Together we have written a manifesto that, if implemented, could turn the tide on ever bigger, heavier, more polluting and more dangerous SUVs.
Our manifesto calls for five policy changes:
reform Vehicle Excise Duty so that heavier and more polluting vehicles pay more (with exemptions for adapted vehicles). This would ensure SUVs are taxed in proportion to the damage they cause to roads and the risk they pose to other road users.
introduce a width limit for new car sales from 2030 so that carmakers cannot continue to sell passenger vehicles that are too big for a 2.4 x 4.8 metre UK parking space (with exemptions for adapted vehicles).
follow the lead of Edinburgh City Council and The Hague to introduce a national tobacco-style ban on SUV advertising - including hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric SUVs - on outdoor advertising spaces like billboards and bus stops.
mandate that carmakers must publish an “eco-score” for all new electric vehicles, combining engine efficiency and carbon footprint of the vehicle’s production.
empower and encourage more local authorities to introduce progressive parking tariffs on heavier, bigger and more polluting passenger vehicles, as Bath and Islington councils have already done to some degree.
We all need to get from A to B, and we all want safer and fairer streets to travel on. The presence of SUVs make this impossible: such vehicles operate on a survival of the fittest, “might is right” philosophy, as is apparent from so much SUV advertising.
To get to the future of transport we all want to see, we need to turn the tide on heavier, more dangerous vehicles. Implementing simple policies like the ones described above could start to make a meaningful difference in a relatively short period of time.
If you’d like to see changes where you live, share our manifesto with your MP, local councillors and the Mayor. There are opportunities at every level of government to tackle Britain’s SUV problem and to put us on the right track to a future of safer and fairer transport for all.
James Ward, Adfree Cities
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