Paris, sharing scooters banned
The first big crackdown is coming against one of the most impactful shared mobility phenomena of recent years, at least for the big cities: we are talking about the shared electric scooters that we have been seeing in all the big cities for some years cities of the world – means of transport that have always been at the center of great controversy to the point that Paris, the French capital, has just voted to ban them completely from the city, banning sharing companies from offering scooters as a service.
Since 2018, the city of Paris has been among the first to be invaded by sharing scooters conveniently parked on the sidewalks, and very soon the city governors realized the need to apply very strict rules to avoid improper use: the maximum speed has been reduced to just 10 km/h, the obligation to park them in designated areas has been inserted, but this has not been enough and now the people of Paris have spoken out in a referendum organized by the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, voting for the removal of 15,000 electric scooters by September 1, 2023.
--> Initially it was Hidalgo himself who pushed for the introduction of scooters in the city, so as to favor travel without a car; unfortunately the plan did not go as planned, and statistics say that those who use the scooter do it mainly in place of public transport or a healthy walk, and not in place of the car. Furthermore, scooters hardly integrate with the traffic of heavy vehicles, also due to the imprudence of those who drive them; finally, there is the problem of public land constantly occupied by scooters, often left on the sidewalk without much attention.
More than 100,000 Parisians voted – a very low percentage, around 7.5% of those right – and in 89% of cases the vote was against the presence of shared scooters in the French city; hard blow for the sharing companies operating in the city, which, however, will be able to continue to offer the service with pedal-assisted bicycles.