Hire companies to be charged annual fee as city predicts massive growth in scooter use

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Paris plans to regulate the use of electric scooters by introducing fines for riding on the pavement, designated parking spots, and an annual fee for the hire companies.

Before national legislation on electric scooters expected this year, the city council voted to impose fines of €135 (£115) for riding on the pavement and €35 for blocking the pavement with parked scooters. The city will also remove badly parked scooters.

The city council said that while it supported new forms of mobility to replace polluting vehicles, the increasing use of stand-up electric scooters was putting pedestrians at risk, notably older people and infants, while anarchic parking hindered parents with prams and people in wheelchairs.

Scoot alors! Will Paris fall in love with the electric scooter? Read more

By the end of the year, the city will also create 2,500 dedicated parking spaces for scooters – or trottinettes – and is considering making their use compulsory. Several European cities already provide dedicated areas for scooter parking.

Nine companies – including the California-based market leaders Lime and Bird – operate 15,000 electric scooters in Paris, and the city estimates there could be 40,000 by the end of 2019.

The firms will have to pay an annual fee of at least €50 per scooter for the first 499 scooters, rising to €65 for companies operating more than 3,000, the city said. Companies operating free-floating bicycles will also pay annual fees of €20 to €26 per bicycle.

In December, Madrid ordered Voi, Wind and Lime to remove their scooters from the streets, saying they had failed to comply with rules that determined which areas the scooters were allowed to operate in.