Parisians vote nearly 90% against the presence of self-service scooters in the capital

The Parisians voted, Sunday April 2, against the renewal of contracts authorizing three private operators (Lime, Tier and Dott) to each deploy 5,000 electric scooters in the capital, during an unprecedented “citizen vote” in Paris. The inhabitants of the capital voted 89% against these means of transport offered in “free floating”. After welcoming them in 2018, Paris is set to become the only European capital to completely ban self-service scooters.

Despite the very strong abstention (92%) among approximately 1.3 million registered voters, the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo pledged again, Sunday, “to purely and simply respect the result” of this vote. She herself had campaigned for the vote “against”Tofter having multiplied the measures to regulate two-wheelers. MBut the subject was considered secondary even within the municipal majority.

Many reviews

The three operators had tried everything to escape eviction. They had in particular demanded, in vain, the use of electronic voting, stressing that only a third of 18-24 year olds, their first clientele, had heard of the ballot. Some of their controversial methods had also been singled out, such as offering a free race on voting day, or using influencers on social networks to mobilize their young clientele.

Electric scooters are accused by their detractors of being abandoned anywhere in the public space, of grazing pedestrians on the sidewalks at full speed or of ultimately having a bad carbon footprint.