They have become a stopgap for public transport. Alongside Vélibs, taxis and VTCs, scooters in shared service (Lime, Tier and Dott) have made their way into the habits of Parisians and tourists. Only, vilified for their often anarchic character and although covered with technological sensors, these transport devices are in the crosshairs of the town hall of Paris which could very soon kick them out of the capital. The Parisian executive has been carrying out an in-depth reflection for several weeks and will rely on a vote at a future Council of Paris to ratify the subject. But the conviction of the city councilors is made: the assistant for mobility and roads, David Belliard, but also the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will propose the non-renewal of the contract on the grounds in particular of failing security for users. . “The operators have not shown us the environmental interest of the service and the real cost/benefit balance sheet for Parisians”, already blew David Belliard’s entourage at the end of last year.
And the town hall to point out the many accidents caused by misuse such as the presence of two users on the machine, a practice very widespread among young people and by nature very accident-prone. Moreover, according to unpublished figures communicated by the police headquarters to L’Express at the end of 2022, over the first eight months of last year, 337 accidents involving a motorized personal transport device were listed. These accidents resulted in one death and 373 injuries (+ 38.52% compared to the same period in 2021) including 278 victims among users of these machines (+ 39.70%). “In addition, between January 1 and October 30, 2022, 2,019 fines were recorded against users in Paris, compared to 480 over the same period of 2021”, indicates the prefecture. Finally, the repression of sidewalk parking continues to climb since after the 160 tickets issued in 2021, there were already 186 in the fall of 2022 (+ 16%).
800 employees would be affected
It is on the basis of these official feedbacks that, since September, the dialogue between the three operators authorized to occupy public space and the Parisian elected officials is almost broken, while the end of their license is looming on 23 next March. As a result, the climate is very anxiety-provoking within the companies concerned: in total, 800 employees would indeed be affected by the non-renewal; measure which must be notified to those concerned no later than February 23. And yet, on the ground, the service has never seemed so attractive! “With a constant fleet, we recorded an increase in usage of more than 70% in 2022 compared to 2021. That’s one trip every 4 seconds!” indicates a senior executive of one of the three start-ups.
At Lime, which saw nearly a million unique users in the capital in 2022, it is estimated that “the use of electric scooters in Paris is growing rapidly. This multiplication raises legitimate issues such as road safety or parking regulation. We are maintaining a sustained pace of innovation to respond to this and improve ourselves, “says Hadi Karam, general manager of Lime France, who is working in particular on a feature to prevent two people from riding on each machine.
Innovations that are likely to arrive late. Paris, the leading European market and micromobility laboratory, could therefore store the 15,000 scooters currently authorized to circulate. This park had been sized in 2019 when the capital saw a new player arrive almost every week in this very juicy segment (including in investments), which then made the town hall fear of having to manage more than 40,000 scooters in limited public space. This is why Anne Hidalgo’s teams then proposed limiting the number to 5,000 machines per operator, for a fee of 50 to 65 euros per unit. The town hall has thus collected, according to our information, a little more than a million euros each year with the scooters. Even if they were allowed to keep their fleet of shared bicycles, the operators expect a major social breakdown, and none of them seems determined to continue the Parisian adventure cut off from the small cars.