The US scooter rental company Lime has come under fire from Paris officials for offering free 10-minute rides to users who register to vote in next month’s referendum on whether the French capital should ban for-hire e-scooters.
Paris city hall has warned that the capital’s fleet of 15,000 for-hire e-scooters presented safety concerns, stressed pedestrians and clogged-up streets, and the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has taken the unusual step of calling a public vote on 2 April over what she called an “extremely divisive” issue.
Paris residents will be asked to vote on the question: “Do we or don’t we continue with free-floating rental scooters?”
But this week, Lime – which cites Paris as one of the cities with the highest usages of its services in the world – emailed its users to push them to sign up on the electoral register in order to vote.
For Parisians who are not on the electoral register, the deadline to sign up in order to vote on the scooter issue is Friday 3 March.
Lime users received emails this week saying they had only a few days left to join the register, and offering an incentive of free minutes if they did so. “Prove you’re registered to vote and get a free 10-minute ride, on us,” the message said.
The firm is one of three operators licensed to rent e-scooters in Paris – alongside Dott and Tier – and has calculated that a Lime scooter ride begins every four seconds in the city.
David Belliard, the Green deputy mayor in charge of transport and public spaces, tweeted that proposing to “buy voters” was not very nice.
He later said the move by Lime did not break the law because the vote had been called by city hall and was not subject to the same judicial rules as a municipal election. But he suggested it was not “civic” for Lime to have offered free minutes.
Belliard told France Inter radio: “It reduces the debate to the level of consumers, but this debate isn’t between consumers, it’s between scooter-users and residents and it’s about thinking together about how our city is organised. It’s not just about your credit card, it’s an issue of citizenship.”
Faire campagne pour le maintien des trottinettes à Paris, c'est le jeu 💁🏽♀️ Et le 2 avril prochain, tout les parisiens et parisiennes pourront s'exprimer dans les urnes. Mais proposer d'acheter des électeurs, c'est franchement pas joli, joli @lime_fr ! https://t.co/55LXNqm67w
— David Belliard (@David_Belliard) February 28, 2023
A spokesperson for Lime said its objective in offering free minutes was to encourage Parisians to sign up on the electoral register in view of the 2 April vote and to get a maximum number of Parisians to take part.
The company said the final date of signing up, 3 March, had been set arbitrarily by the city – which it considered an extremely short timeframe. “This operation is perfectly legal,” it added.
Paris was the first city in Europe to open up to the “free-floating” shared electric scooter market in 2018, where scooters could be left anywhere and picked up by mobile app.
Hidalgo has said she is leaning towards a ban on rental scooters in the city but will respect Parisians’ vote.
