Parisians voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to ban e-scooter rentals in the French capital. Almost 90 percent of the voters were in favor of banning the rental devices from the streets of Paris, as the city administration announced. The socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo had announced that she would follow the vote, even if the result of the survey is not legally binding.
Around 15,000 e-scooters are available for hire in Paris. The three providers Lime, Tier and Dott will now have to evacuate their fleets completely from the city following the vote.
The sellers of e-scooters, for example for private individuals whose companions are not affected by the referendum, should then be happy. Last year, 700,000 units were sold in France.
Paris was one of the European pioneers with the introduction of rental e-scooters in 2018. But meanwhile, according to Hidalgo, the small electric vehicles have become a real “hot topic”. While the owners of private scooters “take care” of their vehicles, there is a kind of throwaway mentality when it comes to rental scooters, Hidalgo criticized: “We take them and throw them away.”
The proponents, on the other hand, appreciate the rental e-scooters as an easy-to-use vehicle for covering inner-city distances. Opponents argue that the scooters are en masse in the way. They also complain regarding their poor ecological balance and criticize the fact that drivers recklessly hiss past pedestrians on sidewalks. Last year there were more than 400 accidents with scooters in Paris, three people lost their lives.
Paris is not alone in the discussion: numerous major cities around the world have now regulated and restricted the use of e-scooters, while a few – such as Barcelona and Montréal – have banned their use entirely. In Paris, too, the providers had to reduce the speed of the scooters to ten kilometers per hour in around 700 areas in the city center.
