Athens vows tougher rules on e-scooter ‘nuisance’

ATHENS: The mayor of Athens vowed on Monday to regulate rentals of electric scooters, saying their use had become a “terrible nuisance” in the Greek capital.

“We are determined to set rules,” Haris Doukas said in a statement after meeting with executives of the four companies offering e-scooter rentals in the city centre. Authorities plan to create around 70 obligatory parking locations for the scooters and will ban their operation in some areas altogether, Doukas added.

Doukas said he wanted the new system “to begin immediately” in cooperation with operators in the city centre, home to around 640,000 people, without giving a timeframe. Authorities say traffic violations are increasing by users of the more than 4,000 e-scooters offered by Hoppy, Hop, Lime and RideMovi in central Athens.

There were 197 violations in April compared to 88 in March, according to Athens municipal police.The problem of thousands of e-scooters that users abandon without any rules in public spaces in Athens is of great concern to Doukas, who announced in the previous days that he intends to call a meeting with the five companies that rent them out.