Madrid is set to ban rental e-scooters after its operators, “failed to implement limits on their clients’ circulation or to control their parking”, according to mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida.
The Guardian reports that Martínez-Almeida said Lime, Dott, and Tier’s licences will be cancelled from October, with no plans to grant new ones to other operators. He said the market was, “found to be incapable of meeting the requirements set by the mayor’s office to ensure the highest level of safety for citizens.”
Madrid city council introduced a model to regulate the rental e-scooter market in May 2023, authorising the three companies to operate 2,000 each.
As part of the contract, they were required to give the council access to their data and were ordered to implement technology that obliged customers to leave e-scooters in authorised areas and prevented them from hiring scooters in pedestrian-only streets or near historic parks.
> Tier and Dott merge in quest for e-scooter share profitability
A city council statement said: “Municipal technicians have no evidence that this technology has been implemented [by the companies] and, as they have been able to verify, [the e-scooters] circulate or park in prohibited places.”
Privately-owned e-scooters are however reportedly still legal in the city.
Melbourne has also recently banned shared e-scooters, following a council vote. Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said while the Victorian Government’s shared e-scooter scheme has been popular in the city, “there have also been serious issues.
“The safety of Melburnians is being constantly jeopardised by riders doing the wrong thing - riding on footpaths, double [riding], riding without helmets and riding under the influence. E-scooters are thrown across our footpaths, parks and public spaces - creating trip hazards. Residents, visitors and traders have had enough.”
Last year Paris residents voted to ban e-scooters in the French capital, in a referendum that was called partly in response to the number of people being injured and killed in e-scooter accidents.
Again, privately-owned e-scooters are still legal in both Melbourne and Paris. This is in direct contrast to the UK, where e-scooters can only be ridden when rented as part of official trials.
While private e-scooters cannot currently legally be ridden on UK public roads, in 2022 the government announced it would create a low-speed, zero-emission vehicle category that would pave the way for their legislation. However, this has seen many delays.
An open letter organised by national shared transport charity CoMoUK has called for the new Labour government to ‘urgently’ legalise e-scooters.
It says giving e-scooters legal status is “the only solution to the situation with private e-scooters, which are entirely unregulated and unlawful to ride on the public highway, but can be legally bought and are very often illegally ridden”.
> E-scooters and the law: When and where are you legally allowed to ride an electric scooter?
