Nearly 1.4 million Parisian voters are called to vote this Sunday to answer an unusual question that generates as much passion as hate: Are you for or against electric scooter rentals in the city?
Introduced a little over five years ago as an efficient and low-pollution form of transport, 15,000 skateboards rents scattered throughout the capital have overwhelmed local authorities. If they are a clear success among the young population, it is also true that the number of accidents has exploded.
Skateboards (rental or private) starred 459 accidents in 2022, with three deaths and 426 injuries (twice as many injured as in 2019), according to figures from the City Council, headed by the socialist Anne Hidalgo.
“And a third of these accidents end with a hospital admission,” he adds to EFE the councilor for Transport in Paris, the ecologist David Belliard.
Images of skateboards (rental or private) violating all types of traffic regulations (more than one person on board, with little kids at the controls, jumping red lights…) are the daily bread in Paris, where local media and forums on social networks disseminate videos with dangerous actions.
One of the incidents that caused the most impact was the Fatal hit-and-run in June 2021 of a 31-year-old woman that she was walking along the banks of the Seine with a friend, and that she was hit by a skateboard with two other women on board, who fled.
“In addition, they dirty public space (many times they are left lying anywhere) and create a continuous feeling of insecurity,” insists Belliard, making clear his opposition to this means of transport.
Although the City Council had the power not to renew the concessions to the companies, which expire on August 31, it preferred to organize a citizen vote to mitigate the current “democratic distrust” in the institutions, the councilor points out.
For the right-wing opposition, the referendum aims to make up the traffic chaos that Paris is experiencing due to the conjunction of skateboards, bikes, motorcycles and carsmany times coinciding on the same road, despite the efforts of the City Council to perpetuate new bike lanes (there are already 200 kilometers).
The French Government of Emmanuel Macron He has also wanted to have weight in the local controversy, through the Minister of Transport, the Parisian Clement Beaunewho is speculated to be interested in running for mayor of the capital in the next municipal elections.
Beaune announced this week that a national regulation is being prepared that includes the minimum age 14 years (currently there are 12) to drive an electric skateboard and fines of 135 euros (146 dollars) for traffic offenders.
“This regulation arrives late and has some very soft measures,” criticizes Belliard, who stresses that it is one thing to announce the sanctions, and another to put them into practice, alluding to the lack of police officers for traffic issues.
Rental companies, in campaign
Meanwhile, the three rental companies present in Paris (Lime, Tier and Voi) They have also entered the campaign by associating themselves with certain influential people, who highlight the practicality and affordability of this means of transport (prices between 15 and 25 euro cents per minute).
Among the inhabitants of the city, there are also very conflicting opinions. Sofía Del Barrio, a Spanish resident in Paris, is among her defenders.
“I think that they should leave the situation as it isbecause I use scooters every day and so do my friends, and I think that, especially in Paris, that the traffic is horrible, the scooter is one of the fastest forms of transportation”, he argues.
Del Barrio believes that the bicycle, the means of transport that Paris intends to promote, “is just as unsafe” as the skateboard.
“I will vote yes to keep the skateboards”says, for his part, Mathieu, who attributes the increase in accidents to the fact that “there are still no bike lanes on all the streets, only on the main boulevards and on the large avenues.”
“I think things should be done to make skateboarding in Paris safer,” he says.
Charlotte, another Parisian neighbor, has a diametrically opposite view: “I don’t use skateboards. I hate them and find them very dangerous. Voting is a good thing because many times I have seen accidents on skateboards and they also come from anywhere”, he explains.
Paris, with 2.14 million inhabitants, has 15,000 rental skateboards. Whether for its narrow streets or for the huge presence of tourists, the utilization rate is much higher than in other European cities (3.5 daily journeys on average per device, compared to 1.3 in Berlin), which can contribute to the appreciation or abhorrence of citizens.
(With information from EFE)
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Source-www.infobae.com