According to the City of Paris, there are 15,000 free-floating vehicles of all shapes and sizes in the city, from electric scooters to fluorescent bikes and motorcycle-like scooters. The City of Paris announced today that companies that operate free-floating services would have to pay a tax depending on the size of their fleet.
If the plan goes through and you’re running a bike-sharing service, you’ll have to pay €20 per bike per year. For scooter companies, they’ll pay €50 per scooter per year. Motorcycle scooters will be taxed €60 per scooter per year.
According to Le Parisien, it will be a tier system. You’ll have to pay more every time you go over the basic tier. Companies will pay 10 percent more for vehicle No. 500 to vehicle No. 999, 20 percent more for vehicle No. 1,000 to vehicle No. 2,999, and 30 percent more for any vehicle after No. 3,000.
Paris is a tiny city—it’s smaller than San Francisco in terms of geographical footprint. It’s also impossible to park a car and drive in Paris, so the vast majority of people who live there don’t own a car. Using the subway or other transportation methods is much faster and cheaper.
That’s why bikes, scooters, and motorcycle scooters are thriving. Fewer cars on the road are great, but it has created some unexpected challenges.
Bike-sharing services thrived when the city’s bike-sharing system was more or less useless during a network upgrade. GoBee Bike, bike, Ofo, and Mobile launched their services on the streets of Paris. But they’ve all failed. GoBee Bike shut down, Ofo still has a few bikes, but no team, Mobile is scaling back international operations…
That was a bad start for free-floating services, as many broken bikes were already on the streets of Paris. The dock-based bike-sharing system Vélib works fine, with over 1,200 stations and tens of thousands of daily rides. You see them everywhere.
On the scooter front, there are now nine companies operating in Paris. Yes, you read that number correctly. They also have funny names like Lime, Bird, Bolt, Wind, Tier, Voi, Flash, Hive, and Dott.
They’re quite popular because there are many bike lanes in Paris. However, most people still don’t wear helmets, and there are many injuries, which is another issue.
Like many other cities, many people complain about scooters crowding the sidewalk. Navigating the street can be difficult these days if you’re in a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, or being visually impaired.
The City of Paris wants to hold those companies accountable. They need to manage their fleets to maximize the number of scooters that work and remove the broken motorcycles. I’m sure there will be some consolidation and bankruptcies in the space.
When it comes to motorcycle scooters, Cityscoot and Coup have been putting more scooters on the road. There’s no reason they would be excluded from the tax. Sometimes, they are cluttering bike parking space, for instance:
Let’s see if that strategy works to avoid a dumping approach. Free-floating services have a significant impact on the environment. Scooters only last a few weeks before they need to be replaced. The solution isn’t to throw more scooters at the problem.
