So, is it only a matter of time before other cities ditch the kickstand and ban scooters completely?
You might remember Lime scooters were briefly banned in Auckland and Dunedin, over safety concerns. Three months later they were back, only to have their operating licence not renewed by Auckland council.
Pedestrians only need look at the street corners to see that this licence was renewed again, with additional companies joining the micro-mobility melee.
New Zealand’s hop ‘on again, off again’ relationship with e-Scooters is not unique. There are many other cities around the world that have tried to temper the spread of e-scooters. Copenhagen backtracked on a ban in 2021, allowing companies to return, and Montreal is currently voting on a bylaw that could see them back in parks and pedestrianised parts of the city.
However Paris is the first major Metropole to create a blanket ban for the rental vehicles.
Now companies Lime, Dott and Tier have until September 1 to remove their combined fleet of 15,000 scooters.
Yet for all the divisive rhetoric and strongly held opinions, the official scooter referendum failed to move many Parisians.
Only 100,000 people turned out for the public vote. That’s less than 8 per cent of those eligible to vote - or 4.6 per cent of the total population.
Some saw this “public consultation” as a final effort to power through the e-scooter ban, which seemed inevitable.
Under Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the scooters had been restricted to 10km/h speed limit and users kept to strict parking zones, or face hefty fines. It was surprising that there was such low turnout for the public vote, especially if you took the number of scooters in the river Seine as an unofficial ballot.
Perhaps citizens had already expressed their opinion of the scooters thorough other means. Chiefly, acts of vandalism.
Paris has a long history of street-level activism against unwelcome additions to their city. A famous example, turned urban legend, involves the city’s reaction to the introduction of wheel clamping for illegally parked cars. Parisians began pouring superglue in the locks on immobilised vehicles. The city’s parking wardens soon got the message. It became a matter of civic pride.
Scooters, dumped on street corners became a natural target for dissatisfaction.
It’s telling that, within the first year of being introduced, scooter rental companies began hiring the services of a river salvage company Guppy.
Finding 58 electric scooters during one three-hour search of the river and canals suggests that the popular eviction had already begun.
Politician Sylvain Maillard called the vote a “fiasco”. He said that “young Parisians were the big losers” of the vote that did nothing to challenge privately owned scooters.
The three rental companies were critical of the move to not allow online voting, saying that the in-person referendum strongly disadvantaged younger voters. Younger voters who were more likely to be pro electric scooters.
However, by Monday, it was clear they had nowhere else to go but the Seine.
