Room for vroom? Paris votes on banishing e-scooters

The wheels may be about to come off Paris’ ubiquitous for-hire electric scooters.

Zipping around the City of Light on one of them, wind in the hair, or romantically but naughtily e-scooting a deux on one machine when the gendarmes aren’t looking could soon be over if Parisians vote Sunday to do away with the 15,000 opinion-dividing micro-vehicles.

The question City Hall is asking in a citywide mini-referendum is: “For or against self-service scooters in Paris?”

The answer could doom a leading market for the swift two-wheelers that have expanded locomotion choices in the French capital and other urban centres and towns around the world.

Scattered around Paris, easy to locate and hire with a downloadable app and relatively cheap, the scooters are a hit with tourists who love their speed and the help-yourself freedom they offer.

In the five years since their introduction, following in the wake of shared cars and shared bicycles, for-hire scooters have also built a following among Parisians who don’t want or can’t afford their own but like the option to escape the Metro and other public transport.

But amid complaints that e-scooters are an eyesore and a traffic menace, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and some of her deputies want to banish the “free floating” flotilla – so called because scooters are picked up and dropped off at their renters’ whim – on safety, public nuisance and cost-benefit grounds before the capital hosts the Olympic Games next year.

Scooter critics say the machines are particularly dangerous in the hands of tourists who don’t know how to navigate Paris’ frenetic, honk-honk, get-out-of-my-way traffic and the many users who flout the rules and risk fines by riding two to a scooter and by mounting footpaths, sometimes barrelling through pedestrians.

Scooter operators say they transported nearly two million people in the city last year and that 71 per cent of Parisian users are under 35. They’ve used social media influencers, some of them paid, and messages on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok in a get-out-the-vote drive targeting that age group.

They are also offering a free round-trip ride Sunday on their scooters or electric bikes to users who enter the words “Je vote” – I vote in French – into their apps.