(Bloomberg) -- Madrid will ban shared electric scooters starting next month, joining Paris in kicking the vehicles from its streets and addressing complaints of them cluttering the sidewalks.
“Our priority is the physical integrity and safety of the people of Madrid. We revoke the authorization of scooter dealership companies on the city streets,” Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida said in a message on X after the city government announced the measure.
The companies that rent the scooters have failed to comply with requirements including providing service to the entire city, while lacking insurance coverage and technologies that prevent them from circulating or parking in prohibited areas, the local government said in a statement.
Paris voters last year chose to ban shared electric scooters citywide in a referendum, backing city officials who said they had grown frustrated with operators’ use of public space and scooter-related accidents. The vote made the French capital the biggest city to kick rental scooter operators out. Melbourne’s city council voted last month to prohibit them in the central business district, saying they posed a risk to public safety.
Madrid last year awarded Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility a three-year contract to offer up to 6,000 scooters in the city, but the three companies will now have to remove them. The government said one of the main problems with the scooter rentals in the city has been improper parking in non-authorized places.
Lime disagrees with the decision from the Madrid government and will appeal after receiving an official notification, it said in a statement. Dott declined to comment.
(Updates with company comments in the last paragraph.)
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