Public vote overwhelmingly to ban e-scooters from the streets of Paris

89% of those who actually took part in a referendum on the future of shared mobility in Paris have voted to ban e-scooters from the streets. As such, the 15,000 strong fleets of e-scooters owned equally by Lime, Tier and Dott will be removed when contracts run out at the end of August, bringing to a close a scheme which began in 2018.

Despite the huge percentage voting against the e-scooters, less than 8% of the 1.3 million registered voters went to the polling stations. Campaigners aiming to keep the scooters had petitioned for electronic voting in the belief that this would energise younger people to vote but this was turned down.

 400,000 people per month use the e-scooters, 71% of whom are 18-35 year old residents, with a high proportion being students. 85% of users are local residents, the remainder being tourists.

The main objections to the e-scooters have been safety and the fact that the machines were often thoughtlessly abandoned by users.

Lime’s recent safety report for Paris stated that over 99.99% of trips were incident free and of the 0.01% of trips with safety incidents, 87% were minor ones with no medical attention needed. Of the 0.01% of trips with safety incidents, 79% were single vehicle falls and only 2% involved a collision with a pedestrian.

Similarly, Dott have revealed that e-scooter usage is growing 2.6 times faster than accidents, suggesting that users are becoming more experienced and thus safer. 

In response to the vote, Sylvain Maillard, a member of the National Assembly tweeted: ‘Less than 8% participation, no organized campaign, no online voting or proxy, very few offices, and a binary choice without any solution provided: the vote on free-floating scooters is a gigantic democratic fiasco . Electric scooters will remain authorized but will therefore only be accessible to those who can afford to buy one. I am thinking of the young Parisians who are the big losers in this binary vote organized by a municipality which has decided to oppose one generation to another. We will offer another vision of #Paris for them, but also for all other Parisians who want to find a city that lives up to the promises of its history.’