no amour for electric scooters in paris as the city enforces complete ban on them

au revoir, electric scooters OF paris!

Paris has now completely banned the use of rental electric scooters, the first European capital to do so, in hopes of clearing out the road ‘nuisance’ that the two-wheeled vehicles have caused over the past years. The ban circles back to the referendum in April 2023. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called the public to vote on whether or not to ban electric scooters in the city. Even if only an estimated 7.5 percent of people on the electoral roll voted, the ‘yes’ to ban the ride won an overwhelming 90% of the votes.

Since then, Parisians and the authorities have decided to stop self-service scooters in Paris and enforced a complete ban starting September 1st, 2023. In a short note released by the Paris city website, authorizations licensed to the electric scooter companies in Paris ended on Thursday, August 31st, 2023. In a Euronews report, around 15,000 electric scooters have been cleared out since August 2023 with only a few of them left for repair. Now that the full-ban month has come, Paris aims not to see any of the electric scooters on the streets again.

Stricter regulations for electric scooters may not have worked

The complete ban on electric scooters in Paris urges rental companies Lime, Tier, and Dott to focus more on bike sharing. It was around 2018 when Paris adopted the ‘free-floating’ ride sharing which included electric scooters, and in 2020, the city tightened the regulations of the self-service rides following complaints from the residents and pedestrians. The City of Paris alerted the government to ‘this worrying situation, proposing that the law on mobility create a clear legal framework for electric scooters,’ a government announcement claims.

Some of the regulations include a 135 EUR fine for users of electric scooters traveling on the sidewalks and no longer allowed to park on sidewalks where they bothered pedestrians. Given the electric scooter ban in Paris a few years after, the restrictions and fines may not have been enough. In a The Guardian report, David Belliard, the Green deputy mayor in charge of transport and public spaces believes it is possible to live in a big city such as Paris without an electric scooter rental scheme and that by removing them, the city helps de-clutter the public space of Paris.

project info:

name: Electric scooter ban in Paris

government: City of Paris