By Julian Loevenich
Unrolled and au revoir! From September 1st there will be no more rental e-scooters in Paris: 90 percent of those involved voted in favor of this in a vote in the French capital. In Berlin, however, randomly parked e-scooters will continue to be part of the street scene for the time being.
According to Jan Thomsen, spokesman for the Senate Department for Mobility, a complete ban on e-scooters in the capital would probably not be legal: “This would prevent an entire branch of the economy”.
From September 2022 to February 2023, there were 1827 administrative offense procedures due to incorrectly parked e-scooters Photo: picture alliance/dpa
Instead, Berlin is going the way of the special use permit. Means: The providers have a right to permission to use the road – if there is no conflict with the public interest. “However, the regulation is to be evaluated by the end of 2023,” says Thomsen.
The CDU and SPD already have a successor solution ready in their coalition agreement: “We will end the illegal and dangerous parking of e-scooters through a city-wide tender and concessions with appropriate conditions.”
Until the new regulations come in, the city is trying to get the e-scooter chaos on sidewalks under control in other ways.
The plan: so-called geo-fencing. Means: If someone wants to park their scooter after the end of the rental period, the system scans the area. If no return is possible there, the rental continues. The user must then look for another storage location.
There are now 41,000 rental e-scooters on the road in Berlin, of which more than 22,000 are offered outside the S-Bahn ring. The rental companies: Lime, Bolt, Voi, Tier.