Parisians voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to ban e-scooter rentals in the French capital. Nearly 90 percent of voters were in favor of banning rental devices from the streets of Paris, the city council announced. Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo had announced she would follow the vote, even though the poll’s results are not legally binding.
There are about 15,000 e-scooters for rent in Paris. The three providers Lime, Tier and Dott will now have to completely evacuate their fleet from the city after the vote.The sellers of e-scooters, for example for private individuals whose companions are not affected by the referendum, should be happy then. Last year, 700,000 copies were sold in France.
Paris was one of the European pioneers with the introduction of rental e-scooters in 2018. But in the meantime, according to Hidalgo, small electric vehicles have become a real “hot topic”. While the owners of private scooters tend to “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, value e-scooter rentals as a user-friendly vehicle for covering distances in the inner city. Opponents argue that the scooters are massively in the way. They also complain about their poor environmental balance and criticize motorists recklessly hissing past pedestrians on sidewalks. There were more than 400 scooter accidents in Paris last year, which killed three people.
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 completely banned their use. In Paris, too, the providers had to reduce the speed of the scooters to ten kilometers per hour in about 700 areas in the city center.
Source: Krone
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