2023-05-04 16:45:00
Last month, Paris announced with great fanfare that it was ending the shared scooter system. After the French capital, it is the Belgian capital which hardens the tone in this beginning of May. No ban on the agenda, but more severity as to the number of machines strewing the sidewalks of the city-region.
From next year, the number of scooters will indeed be limited to 8,000, tells us the office of Minister Elke Van den Brandt (Groen), confirming information from the newspaper L’Echo.
The current version of the 2024-2027 call for tenders plans to grant concessions to only two operators with 4,000 machines each. Far from the 21,000 scooters currently available in Brussels.
To these 4,000 planned scooters will be added a maximum of 7,500 shared bikes, 600 scooters and 300 cargo bikes.
Another novelty: the drop-zones will be generalized from next January on the whole regional territory, while the old version of the text did not impose this system everywhere. Finally, the price of fines imposed on operators for poorly parked vehicles has been increased.
“Shared electric scooters have recently appeared on the streets and offer an additional alternative, but are currently causing inconvenience to others. If we can guarantee that this nuisance disappears, shared scooters will be able to keep their place within our Region”, commented Minister Van den Brandt.
The call for severity from the municipalities has been listened to
Mentioned last fall, the first version of the decree, still in preparation, provided for a limitation of the number of scooters per operator, but no limitation of the number of operators.
What has tipped the scales towards more restrictions in recent months? According to our information, the will of the Brussels municipalities to crack down more, the worrying explosion of scooter accidents, and, to a lesser extent, the climate generated by the Parisian ban.
The decree currently on the table will make it possible, in the future, to accommodate a third operator and to mount up to 6,000 scooters per firm “if necessary”… or move to a blanket ban. “If it appears that the rules are not being followed or not proving to be effective enough, we will consider moving to a total ban on shared electric scooters,” assures Minister Groen.
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