Erfurt (dpa/th) - In Thuringia, the expansion of car sharing offers should be made easier. The state parliament decided on Thursday to change the road law accordingly. Accordingly, in the future, municipalities will only be required to levy a fee for parking spaces for shared vehicles. The cities and municipalities alone decide on the amount of the special usage fee due for car-sharing parking spaces in public parking spaces. Until now, the fee had to be "at least equivalent to the market value of the public parking space provided".
With the change in the law, the cities and municipalities will have greater discretion, said Laura Wahl, member of the Greens. Parking pressure can be alleviated by sharing vehicles. The left-wing member of the state parliament Gudrun Lukin pointed out that a shared and actively used vehicle could replace 10 to 20 cars. SPD MP Lutz Liebscher said that using a car-sharing vehicle emits 16 percent less carbon dioxide than an average car.
The AfD parliamentary group, which abstained from voting, criticized the fact that promoting car sharing in Thuringia, which is characterized by rural areas, only makes limited sense. The CDU parliamentary group and the FDP group called for legal certainty for the municipalities. FDP MP Dirk Bergner demanded that they be given a handout when collecting the special usage fee in order to avoid pitfalls.
