Marseille cuts down number of e-scooters

More than a third of the two-wheelers will be taken off the streets of the Mediterranean city

The Mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, announced yesterday that City Hall will immediately remove 1,500 of the shared e-scooters available in order to bring about more orderliness in public spaces and in traffic.

"Why? Because it's almost nonsense, it's poorly regulated. I asked the operators to do drastic things, I saw that a few times, they dragged their feet. Every time they drag their feet, I'm applying a sanction. And so today we're going to remove 1,500 scooters. And if this continues, we'll continue to remove them,” he threatened in an interview for France Bleu Provence.

The measure was announced despite the recognition that public transport options in the southern French city are still insufficient to cover the needs of the city to transition to more sustainable means of mobility.

What this means is that more than a third of the micromobility devices will disappear from the streets of Marseille. Before the mayor’s announcement, there were 4,000 scooters, divided among three operators – Bird, Lime and Voi.

Is France souring on e-scooters?

The French capital, Paris, made headlines earlier this year by outlawing the contentious two-wheelers after a referendum in April. And it seems that the country’s second biggest city is already following closely that example given the drastic reduction of the scooters.

In fact, Mr Payan quipped that if his city had as many metro lines as Paris, then he would also ban the scooters outright.

The City Council will also require operators to spread out their scooters more evenly in the territory of the city rather than crowd them in the centre. In addition, they will have to produce annual reports on compliance with the street traffic code.

Concerning uncontrolled parking, the municipality announced that it would implement “a penalty of 25 euros for operators for each violation noted, in order to counter poorly parked scooters in public spaces”.