Voting on April 2 | Parisians called to vote on self-service scooters

(Paris) Scooter operators on Friday castigated the organization by the Paris City Hall of an unprecedented vote – at the ballot box and not online – on the maintenance of their machines in one of the capitals of soft mobility.

Scooters are accused of littering the asphalt despite the dedicated locations, of brushing pedestrians on the sidewalks at full speed, of competing with public transport or of not being so ecological because of a supposedly poor carbon footprint.

In 2018, a dozen companies had set up in the capital with their self-service scooters, but the drifts caused the city to tighten the screw on several occasions, while the number of bicycles and scooters (private) s is multiplied in parallel.

The Parisian market is now limited to three operators: the Californian Lime, the Franco-Dutch Dott and the German Tier. The 15,000 scooters must be parked in specific places and their speed is limited to 20 km/h everywhere in the city, and 10 km/h in 700 dense areas.

At the end of 2022, the Town Hall threatened the three operators not to renew their contract, which expires at the end of March.

They have since announced new measures to reassure, between registration of scooters, control of the age of the user and reinforcement of patrols against poorly parked vehicles.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo has indicated that she is leaning towards “stopping” self-service scooters. “But I will respect the vote of Parisians,” she said in an interview with the Parisian January 15th.

On Sunday April 2, the inhabitants of the capital will have to go to the polling stations of their district to decide for or against the maintenance of these machines in the streets, announced the City of Paris in a press release on Friday.

Open to all Parisian voters registered on the municipal electoral lists, this “citizen vote” will focus on the question: “For or against self-service scooters in Paris? »

Lime, Dott and Tier castigated the organization by the town hall this vote in ballot boxes and not online.

This vote would exclude in particular “young people who, as we know, do not participate in the polls and are the first to shun the ballot box”, they underlined in a press release. Young people are also the first users of these scooters, with an average age of 33 years.

The operators also ensure, petition and survey in support, that a majority of Parisians under 65 are opposed to a ban.

Prohibited or restricted

In Barcelona or Montreal, these lightweight self-service two-wheelers have been totally banned.

In Lisbon, their number will soon be halved and their speed reduced to 20 km/h. The regulation negotiated by the town hall of the Portuguese capital with the five operators concerned aims to limit the inconvenience and accidents associated with their use, as cities like Stockholm and Oslo have already done.

“There is no point in banning, because there is a whole generation that wants this mode of transport,” commented the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, in an interview with AFP on Thursday. At the same time, “no city has a happy experience with scooters. We are all looking for a solution,” he added.

Marseille has also asked operators to make efforts to regulate the age of users or the parking of scooters, some of which still end up in the sea.

The French government is leaning more towards a “regulation plan” for electric scooters at the national level, with more controls and “precautionary measures”.

Lime boss Wayne Ting plans to return soon from California to defend his two-wheelers. For him, Paris is “the most important city in the world for micromobility” and would choose to go back if it banned scooters. “We are part of the solution” and “we continue to improve every day”, he pleaded during a first trip at the end of November 2022.

The final results of the ballot will be announced on the evening of April 2 and published on the Paris.fr website.