Parisians overwhelmingly vote to ban for-hire e-scooters from their streets
Parisians have overwhelmingly voted to banish for-hire e-scooters from the streets of the French capital, in a mini-referendum the mayor said sent a āvery clear messageā.
Approximately 15,000 e-scooters could now vanish from central Paris at the end of August when the cityās contracts with the three operators expire.
The question that City Hall asked voters in its citywide mini-referendum on Sunday was: āFor or against self-service scooters in Paris?ā
The result was not close. City Hall said on its website about 103,000 people voted, with 89% rejecting e-scooters and just 11% supporting them.
Turnout was very low. The vote had been open to all of Parisā 1.38 million registered voters.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hailed the vote as a success and repeated her vow to respect the outcome of the consultative referendum.
The votersā āvery clear message now becomes our guideā, she said. āWith my team, weāll follow up on their decision as I had pledged.ā
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 some Parisians who do not want or cannot afford their own but like the option to escape the Metro and other public transport.
But many Parisians complain that e-scooters are an eyesore and a traffic menace, and the micro-vehicles have been involved in hundreds of accidents.
Ms Hidalgo and some of her deputies campaigned to banish the āfree floatingā rental flotilla ā so called because scooters are picked up and dropped off around town at their rentersā whim ā on safety, public nuisance and environmental cost-benefit grounds before the capital hosts the Olympic Games next year.
