Paris begins to reduce the speed of rental E scooters

Paris took a regressive step on the management of E scooters. Rather than encouraging more of them while removing cars they have put strong speed limits on the rental e scooters.

rental scooter speed will be capped at 10km/h (6mph) in around 700 districts throughout Paris including the major tourist spots. The result of which is to undermine the value of the micro mobility. Along with increasing costs for all riders.

The geo fencing and location data collected by the rental companies including Dott, Tier and Lime will automatically reduce the e scooter speeds. The question is if they do this to e scooters why are they not bringing car speeds down the the same? Cars are far more dangerous for everyone else except the driver.

While the he main criteria for picking the zones was plenty of pedestrians, the operators said in a joint statement.

Surely then ban cars rather than restrict e scooters. Giving more space for the micro mobility providers on the road.

City hall threatened the three private operators that it would renew their licences only if they made progress towards speed limits.

Plus get their users to park scooters in designated areas instead of dumping them on streets and pavements. (See firms like Sparkpark as a solution provider.)

On Monday,Paris’s deputy mayor David Belliard, who is in charge of transport including micromobility, told AFP the restrictions were “a first step, but nowhere near enough”. David Belliard is holding the E scooter compnaies to a far high standard and restriction than cars.

Every Paris district would supply a list of desired slow zones over the coming weeks, which would be passed on to the operators.

The promoting of good parking is now key to the promotion of e scooter use in the city. The operators now require picture proving that they dropped off the scooter in the right place. They also created a joint 12-person taskforce to pick up scooters left randomly in the street.

Surely they are looking at this the wrong way round. The car is the one that littering the streets and the roads. We now have the tech to drive the car out of the city and still improve mobility.

Legislators like David Belliard continues to drive a car centric view of cities. Even cracking down on E scooters with one accident that resulted in a death of an italian lady. Yet chooses not to crack down on the car event when there are multiple accidents a day.