An overwhelming majority of Parisians who took part in a referendum on electric scooters have voted to ban the devices from the streets of the French capital, reflecting exhaustion with a public-transit alternative that was once seen as convenient and climate-friendly but is now largely regarded as dangerous and environmentally questionable.
Relatively few people turned out on Sunday for the referendum — only about 100,000 Parisians voted, less than 7.5 percent of those eligible — but those that did cast a ballot left little doubt about what they wanted: Nearly 89 percent backed the ban.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist Party, led the campaign against the rental scooters, describing them as a “nuisance” in the capital.
Although the referendum, described as a “public consultation,” was nonbinding, Ms. Hidalgo — who five years ago had backed the spread of the scooters to cut traffic — said that she was “committed to respecting the results of the vote.”
With the operators’ contracts expiring at the end of August, starting on Sept. 1, Ms. Hidalgo said, “there will be no more self-service scooters in Paris.”
The decision could have implications for other cities, such as Rome, San Francisco and Stockholm, that initially embraced the electric scooters but have now begun tightening regulations.
Paris is one of the largest markets for rental scooters in the world, recording about 20 million trips in 2022. But in the same year, the national road safety department, Sécurité Routière, said that 34 people had died and 570 others had been seriously injured in France while riding an electric scooter or similar mobility device.
The French National Academy of Medicine also weighed in, saying that it considered the electric rental scooters a “major health problem.”
Ms. Hidalgo has looked for ways to reduce congestion and address climate change, but despite the fact that the scooters run on electrically charged batteries, their environmental value came under scrutiny.
The three companies that run the scooter rental programs pointed to a city-sponsored study that found the devices helped reduce pollution in Paris, but that same study also noted that many people would have traveled using another method with a low carbon footprint.
City Hall hailed a “victory for local democracy,” but opposition parties, including President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance, and the three scooter rental companies denounced what they called a one-sided vote.
They were critical that online voting — rare in France — had not been allowed, arguing that its absence discouraged the participation of younger voters who were most likely to use the scooters. They also complained that the geographic boundaries of who could vote, excluding people who live in the suburbs but spend time in the capital, were too restrictive.
The scooter operators — the San Francisco-based company Lime, the Dutch start-up Dott, and the German start-up Tier — tried various tacks in campaigning against a ban. That was in part because they feared a vote to prohibit the devices would send a negative signal to other cities that initially embraced the scooters but are now increasingly considering whether the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
Before the vote, the companies operating in Paris organized a marketing campaign based on social-media influencers in the city, and it offered free rides on the day of the referendum to try to mobilize young voters, their core customer base.
Between them, the three companies, which hire out their devices via smartphone apps and have operated in Paris since 2018, have a total of about 15,000 scooters zipping around the capital.
Source : Nytimes
