The results of Sunday’s referendum were overwhelming: Some 89 percent voted to ban the scooters. But turnout was extremely low, at 7.46 percent, prompting e-scooter operators to say the vote was not truly representative of the wishes of the city’s residents — particularly its younger citizens, who are more likely to rent e-scooters but less likely to show up to vote.
The vote to ban “free-floating” e-scooters — named because they are dockless — came even after the main e-scooter providers offered free rides to those who were registered to vote.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who was in favor of a ban, said she would respect the outcome of the nonbinding vote. She pledged there would be “no more self-service scooters in Paris” from Sept. 1, the day after their operators’ contract with the city expires. The ban would apply only to e-scooters for hire, not to those owned by individuals.
Now the question is whether it could encourage other cities to enact similar bans. While e-scooter operators have framed Paris as a global outlier, other major cities have enacted restrictions, including Amsterdam and Shanghai.
On an overcast Sunday in Paris, voters were asked to answer a simple question: “For or against self-service scooters in Paris?”
As they streamed out of the revolving doors of City Hall, voters in Paris’s 17th district mostly said they answered in the negative. The reasons they cited — including concerns relating to safety and cleanliness — echo the criticism of e-scooters heard in cities around the world, from Cincinnati to Shanghai.
“There is a large portion of people who use these scooters who do not follow the rules, and therefore who behave in a dangerous way, who put the lives of others in danger,” said Georges Jozwiak, 72, who said he mostly gets around Paris on foot.
“I voted against self-service scooters because I consider that they are dangerous, that those who use them most of the time use them very badly. … They take parking spaces away from cars and motorcycles,” said Jean-Baptiste Gigon, 29. “I see no advantage to this type of mobility.”
Sopran Lamri, a 23-year-old law student who said he voted to keep e-scooters, acknowledged that “there is a lot of fairly dangerous usage,” including people who use e-scooters with another person in the back, or drive them while intoxicated. But e-scooters cut his commute to his internship in half, from 45 to about 20 minutes, he said, and provide him with opportunities to explore Paris in a unique way.
“It’s really something that is incorporated into my daily life. We will inevitably find substitutes, but there is less comfort, and also a habit that is a little more complicated to lose,” Lamri said of a potential ban.
Lime, Dott and Tier — the three companies licensed to operate a fleet of about 15,000 scooters in Paris — criticized the result and the way the referendum was carried out: the election did not include proxy or online voting and took place on the same day as the Paris Marathon. “We’re disappointed that this is how the City has chosen to approach a safe, emissions-free alternative to cars that more than one million Parisians rely on,” Lime spokesperson Russell Murphy said in an email.
The operators said the low turnout proved that the outcome of the vote was representative of only a minority of Parisians — those opposed enough to e-scooters to show up. Dott in a statement decried what it called “very restrictive voting methods” which “led to an extremely low turnout, heavily skewed toward older age groups.”
The operators also insist Paris is bucking the trend, pointing to other cities such as New York and London that have moved to expand free-floating e-scooter services. But the sweeping nature of the vote in a major city like Paris is a setback for these operators — particularly as Paris prepares to host the Olympic Games in 2024.
E-scooters have grown in popularity since they first began to pop up in major cities around 2017. For people who use them, they are a quick and cheap way of getting around. Operators say they are better for the environment and less prone to accidents than cars or motorcycles. But detractors argue the e-scooters worsen congestion and are used and parked irresponsibly by some. They say e-scooters are mostly used by people who would otherwise walk or take public transportation, making the environmental benefit less clear.
Some cities have restricted e-scooters for hire in response to these criticisms. Montreal ended an e-scooter pilot program in 2019 because too many users disrespected the rules. Other cities that banned e-scooters later allowed them back under stricter conditions.
Paris authorities imposed strict rules on e-scooters starting in 2019. They later limited the number of operators to three and restricted how quickly the e-scooters could go, where they could be parked and who could ride them.
That didn’t stop city officials and some residents from complaining that the scooters were an eyesore and a safety hazard. Operators proposed additional safety measures last year — including age verification for riders and a pledge to equip more scooters with license plates to allow police to more easily issue tickets to riders who violate traffic rules. But in January, Hidalgo announced the referendum and said she was in favor of a ban.
The vote took place amid weeks of protests in Paris against the French government’s proposal to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. Sunday’s vote came just days after a sanitation workers’ strike ended and piles of trash that had accumulated on Paris’s streets were cleared.
Operators are still hopeful they can persuade City Hall before September to find acceptable restrictions to their fleet instead of implementing a wholesale ban.
After casting their votes on Sunday, voters emerged into the gray and cold Parisian afternoon. One man walked down the steps and toward a woman and a child.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s grab some scooters.”
