While Paris is drawing a line this Friday on the use of electric scooters, in Marseille, the future of these two-wheeled machines was compromised to say the least. Last February, the town hall of Marseille had urgently brought together the three operators who share the market, dissatisfied with the current situation described by certain elected officials as “Far-West”, to the point of threatening to end this service.
The agreement which indeed binds the operators to the town hall of Marseille was written by the teams of the previous mayor of Marseille, Jean-Claude Gaudin, and ends next month. Asked by 20 minutesthe new mobility assistant to the mayor of Marseille Audrey Gatian finally gives a little air to scooters, and no longer plans to “stop everything”, as she said a few months ago.
Reduce the number of scooters
“Scooters are no longer on borrowed time, but I think we have to reshuffle the cards,” says Audrey Gatian. And to confide: “we were very afraid of the summer of 2023 but it finally went well. It has notable changes in parking, which shows that we can make things happen”.
Among the changes in sight, the elected official plans in particular to reduce the number of scooters available, in order to increase the turnover rate. “We see that on average, in Marseille, a scooter is used three times a day. It’s a number that isn’t ridiculous but could be reduced to reduce clutter. We are also considering reducing the number of operators. “Currently, three operators have the authorization to each market 1,500 electric scooters.