PARIS: An overwhelming majority of Paris residents voted to ban electric scooters from French capital’s streets on Sunday. Even though te referendum is non-binding referendum, city authorities have said that they would follow the outcome.
In Paris’ 20 districts that published, the ban won between 85.77% and 91.77% of the votes, as per the website belonging to the City of Paris website. The vote has been termed as a rare “public consultation” and led to long queues at ballot boxes across the capital.
Cities globally are tightening limits on electric scooters, restricting the number of operators along with speed and parking spots, according to Reuters.
In 2021, 24 people lost their lives in scooter-related accidents in France, including 1 in Paris. While in 2022, Paris registered 459 accidents with electric scooters and similar vehicles, including 3 fatal ones.
Complaints over deployment of electric scooters
Electric scooters accessed via mobile phone apps have operated in Paris since 2018, however, following complaints about their chaotic deployment, Paris in 2020 reduced the number of operators to 3.
It gave them a 3-year contract, with the requirement that scooters’ speed be capped at 20 km/hour and imposed specific scooter parking areas. The current contracts will expire in September.
The scooter operators had offered more regulations, including checking users were over eighteen, fixing license plates so that police could id traffic offenders and limiting to 1 passenger.
On Sunday, operators including Tier and Lime sent free voucher codes to users seeking them to vote against the ban.
