It will soon be the end of self-service electric scooters in the streets of the capital. On September 1, there will be none of these 15,000 motorized, two-wheeled vehicles left, which it was possible to rent at any time by the minute. On Sunday April 2, just over 100,000 Parisians voted more than 89% against the renewal of the contract which linked the three scooter operators – Dott, Lime and Tier – to the Parisian municipality, on the occasion of an unprecedented citizen vote convened by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. “The Parisians have given us a very clear roadmap, and we will follow their decision as I promised. On September 1, there will be no more self-service scooters in Paris”, had informed the socialist city councilor, referring to “a victory for local democracy”.
Despite the abstention of some 1.3 million registered voters in Paris, the Parisian city councilor had indeed undertaken “to purely and simply respect the result”, and had in any case campaigned “against”. After helping to set them up in 2018 and considered a pioneering city in terms of new mobility, Paris will finally become the only European capital to permanently ban free-floating scooters. A choice assumed by the municipal majority, which intends to bet on Vélib’ as well as on the fleets of self-service electric bicycles to offer a solution of soft mobility to Parisians and to tourists. And this, in particular in view of the holding of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the region next year.
Unsurprisingly, the three operators have never hidden their disappointment. Together, as soon as the results were announced, they denounced the conditions for organizing this very first citizen “vote”. Concerning the modalities of the vote, they had even already warned that these “do not allow a consultation that is neither sincere, nor egalitarian, nor impartial”. “It would be a shame if the decision were taken by a minority”, worried for example Hadi Karam, the general manager of Lime France, a few days before the referendum. Since then, each operator has advanced its pawns, organizing the gradual reassignment of its fleet in the cities where it is already established.
“After having accompanied thousands of Parisians and Ile-de-France residents on their daily journeys, we are delighted to be able to offer a second life to scooters,” said Bastien Cransac, Lime’s Western Europe CEO, for whom ” the decision of the city of Paris is an exception on European territory”. He said he was “proud of the trust granted and renewed by several leading cosmopolitan and international cities”. Among these, we find Lille, in the north of France, but also foreign cities such as Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark or London, the capital of England.
Same process for Dott and Tier. This last operator, launched in Germany in 2018, is delighted, for example, to be present in nearly 80 municipalities in Île-de-France, including the urban community of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and that of Grand Paris Seine. West. As for the Franco-Dutch Dott, he plans to redispatch his scooters to Bordeaux, Belgium and as far as Tel Aviv, Israel. All of them are in any case at heart not to sacrifice their motorized vehicles, whose life expectancy now oscillates between 5 to 6 years and are often completely removable. The objective is to repair them if necessary and put them back on the circuit as soon as the school year starts.
