Parisians Say Au Revoir to Shared E-scooters
upstart writes:
89% of citizens want them gone - at least among the 7.46% who showed up to vote:
Citizens of Paris voted on Sunday to ban e-scooters from the City of Love, and Mayor Anne Hidalgo responded by promising that the fleets of rechargeable rentables would be gone come September.
The outcome was overwhelming, with 89 percent of votes cast in favor of the ban, though only 103,084 of Paris's 1,382,322 registered voters participated - around 7.5 percent. In a summary of the vote, the Parisian government noted that the final decision on the ban fell to city officials, who didn't appear to plan on countermanding the non-binding outcome.
[...] Only three companies are currently authorized to operate electric scooter fleets in Paris - Lime, Dott and Tier - which were granted three-year contracts in 2020 after Parisians voiced their dissatisfaction with a 2018 rollout in the city. Per Paris's government, the public domain occupancy agreements the three operators have all end on August 31, and it seems Hidalgo doesn't plan to renew them.
Lime and Tier both told The Register they would be ceasing operations in Paris come September 1, though Tier did note its shared e-bike service would still be available in the city.
Both companies expressed disappointment at the outcome, but pointed to the fact that the low voter turnout meant the results weren't representative of the city's entire population. "With approximately 93 percent of citizens not going to the polls, a large majority of Parisians have shown that e-scooters are not an issue," a Tier spokesperson said.
"We acknowledge the result of this unprecedented referendum, which was heavily impacted by very restrictive voting methods. This led to an extremely low turnout, heavily skewed towards older age groups, which has widened the gap between pros and cons," said a spokesperson for Lime.
Lime's response came from a third-party PR firm who said the statement represented a position "shared by Dott, Lime and Tier and not Lime speaking for the industry."
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