Out of Town

California SUV Ban Hidden in Plain Sight

Two years ago, Slate had a piece noting that California weight restrictions against vehicles over 6,000 lbs prohibited SUVs from many streets, but nobody realized it because people thought the signs were for delivery trucks. (A Hummer H2 weighs 8,600 lbs.) It seems most of the ordinances were written with trucks in mind, not SUV's, and so the secret SUV-ban went unenforced.

By Aaron Donovan

2:03 PM EDT on August 22, 2006

From the article:

This isn’t an arbitrary weight limit. 6,000 pounds has long been a recognized dividing line between light and heavy trucks. (For example, the Clean Air Act defines “heavy duty vehicle” as a truck with a gross vehicle weight “in excess of six thousand pounds.”) But local officials either don’t realize they’ve banned big SUVs, or they’re hoping no one will make a stink. …
[T]hese weight limits generally predate the 1990s SUV craze that lured suburbanites out of their lighter sedans and minivans. It’s the vehicles that have changed, not the law. These ordinances remain on the books and they’re not obscure. They’re clearly marked on signs in many California cities.

Since this piece is a bit dated, it is unclear whether authorities actually started banning SUV’s, started rewriting laws, or continued to ignore the problem. Does anybody know if there are any New York-area equivalents?

Aaron Donovan

Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.