Parisians vote to ban self-service electric scooters


The town hall of Paris organized a referendum this Sunday, April 2 to determine the future of self-service scooters. Residents of the capital voted overwhelmingly for the ban.

For or against self-service scooters in Paris? This was the question that Parisians answered on April 2, 2023 as part of a referendum organized by the city. And the answer is clear: nearly 90% of voters voted to ban scooters.

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, had undertaken to respect the result of the vote, the ban on scooters should therefore take place. However, it will not take place immediately, but on September 1, 2023, the end date of the contract that the town hall has signed with the operators.

Self-service electric scooters will be banned in Paris // Source: Unsplash / Jonas Jacobsson

Self-service electric scooters will be banned in Paris

Self-service scooters will therefore disappear from the streets of Paris very soon, to the chagrin of operators. Lime, Dott and Tier, who together manage nearly 15,000 scooters in the capital, had nevertheless bet on several communication campaigns to avoid this result. The operators first offered “minutes of ride” to users ahead of the vote. A maneuver which had been criticized, and which had been described by David Belliard, the assistant to the maiar in charge of mobility, as the purchase of votes.

The week before the vote, the operators also organized a communication campaign on TikTok. With the help of several influencers, the operators wanted to highlight the advantages of scooters, even speaking of a ” disaster if the town hall prohibited them. The two operations were not enough.

Paris is not the first city to ban self-service electric scooters. Montélimar banned these vehicles from its city center in December 2022, and Nice, Toulouse and Villeurbanne have never allowed them to set up shop. In Spain, in 2018, Barcelona completely banned self-service electric scooters, and only those for personal use are authorized.


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