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Councillors in Paris are considering a potential ban on rental e-scooters in the city, due to safety related concerns, according to reports.
While the final decision on whether to renew the licences for Paris’ three shared micromobility operators – Lime, Dott and Tier- rests with the city mayor Anne Hidalgo, Paris town council is debating whether or not to let the trials continue.
Reuters reports that Paris currently has 15,000 rental electric scooters in operation, which were introduced in 2020 on a three year contract as a reduction in the number of scooters available.
Deputy mayor David Belliard, a green party politician in charge of transport in Paris, told Le Parisien newspaper last week: “In terms of security, environment and the sharing of public space, it would be complicated to continue.”
Shared e-scooters have been in operation in Paris since 2018, but following complaints about the original schemes authorities cut the number of operators down to three.
The scooters are currently capped at 20km/h and must be parked in designated scooter parking locations.
But the Parisian operators are hoping to placate the authorities’ concerns by implementing even more strict regulations, including ID checks to ensure users are over 18, fixing licence plates to scooters, and action to prevent multiple riders from sharing one scooter.
Garance Lefevre, Lime public affairs director, said: “If Paris accepts our proposals, it would become the city with the strictest scooter regulation in the world.”
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Tier has also been trialling wheelchair accessible e-scooters in France, in the hopes of a wider rollout to benefit those with reduced mobility.
The German shared transport operator partnered with French start-up Omni to create a solution that pairs wheelchairs to e-scooters through a universal fixing, with the products currently being used in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, eastern France.
