One year after Paris banned electric vehicles, the mayor of the Spanish capital announced that contracts with licensed operators would not be renewed. So Madrid will become the next European city to ban e-scooters
If you want to explore a new city, an electric scooter can be a very fun way to do it, but it can also be dangerous.
And apparently Madrid doesn’t want any more incidents. The city’s mayor, José Luis MartÃnez-Almeida, announced on Thursday, September 5 that the three licensed operators will not be able to renew their contracts in October.
The operator, Amsterdam-based Dott, Germany’s Tier Mobility and US-based Lime, each previously had a license to rent 2,000 scooters in Madrid that could be booked with Uber after city officials began regulating the purchase of e-scooters through May last year.
After dangerous driving and haphazard parking by users, operators were asked to allow City Hall access to their data. Each also had to implement technology that restricted where users could park the scooters in certain areas and meant they could not be ridden on footpaths or historic parks.
However, it turns out that none of them complied. Now, not only are there no plans to renew either contract, but no such deals are in the works with other companies. In a statement, the mayor said: “It has been determined that the market is unable to meet the requirements set by City Hall to ensure the highest level of safety for citizens.”
This comes almost exactly a year after Paris decided to ban e-scooters entirely, the result of a year of public criticism.
