Paris votes to ban hired e-scooters

Residents of Paris, one of the first major cities to adopt public hire electric scooters as a mode of transport, have voted to ban them from the streets of the French capital amid rising safety concerns.

The bikes, known in French as trottinette, were introduced in 2018, making use of Paris' extensive network of cycle lanes, and remain hugely popular, with usage soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each of the city's approximately 15,000 vehicles for hire is used on average 3.5 times a day, the highest usage rate anywhere in Europe. But there have been increasing numbers of accidents involving scooters, with at least 27 scooter-related deaths across the whole of France last year, up from just seven in 2020.

Although the turnout for the vote was extremely low, with less than 8 percent of those eligible to take part in doing so, almost 90 percent supported a ban. The city's Mayor Anne Hidalgo had promised to abide by the result, which only applies to hired vehicles, not privately owned ones.

One of the reasons that the issue is becoming problematic is the lack of organization from when hired scooters were first introduced.

"It was a mess," Erwann le Page, public policy director for Tier, one of the city's three licensed providers, told France 24. "You had over 20,000 scooters and around 20 different companies operating them."

But things have significantly improved, she said, and scooters made a worthwhile contribution to city life. "Our industry didn't exist five years ago. The speed of improvements over the last five years beats 50 years of evolution of cars," she added.

Tighter regulations have been introduced, including speed limits and designated parking areas, but Hidalgo said the vehicles' green credentials had been overhyped.

"They're honestly not very ecological — they get damaged and they are left lying wherever," she told national television channel France 2 earlier this year. "We can't contain them in public spaces and they're causing road safety problems, especially for older and disabled people."

As a result of the vote, service operators Lime, Dott and Tier will not have their contracts renewed when they expire in September. The companies, which have predominantly young client bases, issued a joint statement saying that "very restrictive voting methods", such as the limited number of polling stations being available, had caused low participation and an unbalanced result.

"The result of this vote will have a direct impact on the travel of 400,000 people per month, 71 percent of whom are 18- to 35-year-old residents," the operators said. "It is a step back for sustainable transport in Paris ahead of the 2024 Olympics."

Scooter hire companies could also be facing tougher restrictions at a national level, with Transport Minister Clement Beaune having unveiled new measures shortly before the Paris vote, which would see a minimum user age of 14, and substantially heavier fines for people riding with two aboard a vehicle designed for one.