Editor's Notebook: The City of Light is Banning E-Scooters

Following an April 2 referendum vote, Paris, France, will banish shared battery-powered scooters from its city streets starting Sept. 1, 2023. In a city where there are 1.38 million registered voters, slightly more than 103,000 cast ballots and more than 91,000 of those favored an e-scooter ban.

There is a lot to unpack here, not least of which is a decision impacting one of the world’s largest cities was made by 7.4 percent of its voters. Poor voter turnout aside, the larger question is what this ban could mean for micromobility in other urban areas.

The story of Paris and e-scooter rentals is one that seems to be firmly set on a learning curve. E-scooter rental companies have been operating in Paris since 2018, and the city restricted licenses in 2020 to three vendors after the number of scooters grew to 20,000. The city also pushed for operators to institute speed restrictions around areas with heavy pedestrian traffic, implemented a fine on users who did not park e-scooters in designated places and banned e-scooters from city parks.

The voter-approved ban does not include personal e-scooters, only those that can be rented from the city’s vendors Lime, Dott and Tier. Proponents of the ban cited the clutter of Parisian sidewalks from ditched e-scooters, the expense to rent a scooter for a short distance and brought into question how “green” the transport mode actually is.

However, the one aspect proponents of the ban heavily pushed was safety. One high-profile case in 2021 involved an Italian woman who was killed after a collision with an e-scooter being ridden by two individuals – a practice that is not allowed. The Paris Police Department does not track e-scooter accidents specifically, but it does track incidents involving motorized personal transport devices, which includes e-scooters, as well as motorized skateboards and hoverboards. This group of devices was involved in more than 400 incidents in 2022 according to police reports.

The three e-scooter operators pushed back on some of the negative claims and highlighted the positive impacts e-scooters bring to the City of Light. Lime pointed to its own safety report for Paris that found two percent of incidents involved pedestrians while study’s on micromobility across Europe have found safety incidents involving scooters are 0.015 per 1 million kilometers ridden. Dott noted in cities where parking is allocated for scooters, 96 percent are parked correctly. Dott also pointed out e-scooters are successfully regulated in cities, including Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Oslo, Rome, Stockholm and Warsaw.

A final point on this topic involves usage. A report conducted by the firm 6t on behalf of the city of Paris found 19 percent of shared scooter trips in the city replaced a motor vehicle trip. This is also double what 6t found in a 2019 study. Lime believes this increase can partially be credited to the improved infrastructure the city of Paris has added, including an increase in bike lanes.

I don’t live in Paris, and I can’t fairly assess if the impending ban will be a good or a bad thing for mobility in the city. However, it will serve as a precedent for other municipalities. I hope that before bans enter the conversation, all possible steps to limit accidents and improve safety are explored. 

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The three scooter service providers impacted by the Paris vote - Lime, Tier and Dott - joined with Superpedestrian and Voi in December in the issuance of 10 recommendations the companies believe will result in operations that will improve safety and operations. The recommendations can be found through this link.