Paris will in turn put an end to self-service electric scooters from 1er September, thus following in the footsteps of the Plante administration, which ruled out this option from 2020, after a single season. In Montreal, however, a pilot project is to be held this summer at Parc Jean-Drapeau, and could eventually produce small ones.
Nearly 90% of the approximately 100,000 Parisians who voted voted against the continuation of self-service scooters, during a “vote” held this weekend by the administration of Mayor Anne Hidalgo. It’s in the 16e district where the opposition was the strongest, with almost 92%.
The problem is that the participation rate remains very low, at around 7%. Out of a total of more than one million people registered and eligible to vote, barely 103,000 of them turned out to vote.
In a press scrum, Mme Hidalgo nevertheless argued that the citizens “gave us a very clear roadmap and we will follow their decision”. ” 1er next September, there will be no self-service scooters in Paris,” she confirmed.
Like Montreal, the phenomenon of “free-floating” scooters has been widely criticized in the City of Lights since their arrival a few years ago. In particular, users were accused of parking vehicles anywhere, in a chaotic manner, and of adopting dangerous behavior on the road.
In all, nearly 800 jobs would be threatened by the end of some 15,000 scooters in the Parisian capital. The City also promises to be “vigilant about the situation of operators’ employees” in the coming months.
Sunday, the day of the “vote”, the main operators of scooters had announced that all trips would be completely free, in the hope of saving the furniture. In a joint statement, quoted by several French media, the companies Lime, Tier and Dott denounced on Sunday that “the mobilization could have been broader and more representative if the methods of the vote had been different”, with more polling stations and an electronic ballot, among others.
“No intention to expand”
As early as February 2020, noting that barely 20% of the scooters used in 2019 were parked in dedicated areas, the City of Montreal had put an end to the presence of electric scooters on its territory, saying that it did not want to become “the police scooters”. Only one season had been held then.
PHOTO OLIVIER PONTBRIAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
A scooter user in Montreal, in August 2019
This summer, however, self-service electric scooters will be back at Parc Jean-Drapeau, with a fleet of 100 to 200 scooters. Everything will be in operation from June 24 to November 15, 2023. However, a GPS system will have to be implemented to locate each scooter in real time, prevent it from being locked beyond the planned areas, limit speed and prevent access to certain areas.
“We have limited the experiment to a territory which seems more favorable to us”, affirms the person in charge of mobility, Sophie Mauzerolle, judging that the Parc Jean-Drapeau “is an interesting site, in particular because the offer of collective mobility which is limited to it”. “However, we do not intend to expand the territory covered,” she says.
According to our sources, the experience could be repeated elsewhere, if all goes well, but always in a “closed” and restricted circuit like Parc Jean-Drapeau. “We are currently still in the period of a pilot project from the Government of Quebec, which will lead in particular to the integration of these modes of mobility into the Highway Safety Code,” says Ms.me Mauzerolle.