{"id":1799,"date":"2019-11-21T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insights.ieseg.fr\/?p=1799"},"modified":"2024-03-13T10:45:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:45:45","slug":"urban-mobility-lessons-from-paris-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insights.ieseg.fr\/en\/resource-center\/urban-mobility-lessons-from-paris-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"E-scooters, bikes and urban mobility: lessons from the streets of Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mobility is a crucial challenge for global cities in the 21st century. The growing impact<\/a> and immense risks<\/a> of climate change are becoming clearer every day, and cities are on the front line<\/a>. Globally, transportation generates 14% of all greenhouse gases<\/a>, much of it for personal transportation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To reduce their carbon footprint and increase mobility options, many cities have been investing in bike-share systems<\/a>. One of the largest is Paris\u2019s Velib\u2019<\/a>, with more than 14,000 bicycles<\/a>. Launched in 2007, the system is built around docks \u2013 it\u2019s there that customers pick up and drop off bikes, and they also serve as recharging stations for electric models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2017, a host of start-ups has emerged offering fleets of dockless bikes and electric scooters in cities around the world. The concept was simple: users downloaded an app and paid, grabbed a bike or scooter, and off they went, leaving it wherever they wanted after. Floating on an ocean of venture capital<\/a>, the firms took advantage of a legal void<\/a> and distributed thousands of bicycles and scooters in cities large and small around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Destination, the City of Light<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For mobility start-ups, Paris offered an irresistible target. The region\u2019s population is more than 12 million and it attracted approximately 40 million tourists in 2017<\/a>, each one a potential customer. For better or worse, the city\u2019s leadership initially took a hands-off approach to free-floating bikes and scooters and the result was predictable: chaos<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the height the boom in the summer of 2019, more than a dozen firms were filling Paris streets with vehicles of all sorts. Not only was the free-for-all bad for residents and visitors<\/a>, it was cruel to the start-ups themselves. E-scooters in particular proved to cost far more than they bring in over their extremely short lives<\/a> and the companies burned through their cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was high turnover, with firms exiting the market almost as quickly as they entered. At least six Paris e-scooter operators have \u201csuspended operations\u201d<\/a> (read, given up), and that follows the departure of free-floating bikes from Gobee, Obike and Ofo<\/a>. The most recent victim is Coup, an affiliate of Bosch, which announced November 25 that it would suspend operations in Paris and Berlin because its electric-scooter service was \u201ceconomically non-viable\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the numerous failures and the city\u2019s demand that companies show greater responsibility<\/a>, the venture-capital-driven optimism continues. Newer entrants such as Jump, Wind and Donkey Republic are all hoping to beat the dockless jinx, and more will certainly come. This makes Paris an interesting case study, where regulatory loopholes and brute capitalism meet, with the city\u2019s streets as the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Easy come, easy go<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A key puzzle is why the companies that were the first to arrive in Paris exited almost as quickly. Shouldn\u2019t they have had \u201cfirst-mover advantage\u201d<\/a>, allowing them to keep others at bay? Unfortunately, there were powerful economic realities at play in the micromobility space that made their reigns brief, and that will likely do away with many of the newer entrants as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n