Banned from Paris by popular vote, shared e-scooters will roll for the last time in France's capital on Thursday 31 August, marking the end of five years of their controversial presence.
From 1 September (tomorrow), Paris will become the first European capital to completely ban the scooters, after nearly 90% of the city's residents who voted in the voluntary survey were in favour of the ban, even after the city council previously limited the permitted speed to 10 km/h in 100 busy zones.
Starting on Friday, the three operators – Lime, Tier and Dott – will lose their authorisation to occupy public space with the e-scooters after the unprecedented vote, which took place in April and only saw 7.46% of eligible people turning up. The socialist Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo herself campaigned for the ban, stressing that the removal of these scooters would reduce "nuisance."
Since August, the 15,000 vehicles have therefore been gradually removed from the streets – very few of them are available on Thursday, mainly in the centre of Paris – to be sent to other cities, after possible repairs.
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Of the 5,000 scooters of German company Tier, a third will remain in Île-de-France, in 80 municipalities around Marne-la-Vallée or Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Most of the rest will go back to Germany.
Dott will send its scooters to Belgium or Tel Aviv, while Lime's ones will leave for Lille, London, Copenhagen and several German cities. "We have turned the page on scooters" for the whole of Île-de-France, Lime's director of public affairs Xavier Miraillès told AFP.
In Paris, some 400,000 people have chosen a scooter to get around in 2022, according to operators. Now, the companies are banking on their customers to shift towards the available shared bicycles.
