Lisbon's Mayor Moves to Pull Every Shared E-Scooter Off the City's Streets, With a Council Vote Set for 21 October

Lisbon's mayor, Carlos Moedas, wants every shared electric scooter off the city's streets. He announced on Thursday night, 15 October, that he will ask the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Lisbon City Council) to suspend the shared scooter system, and the proposal is due to be debated at the council's meeting on Wednesday, 21 October.

"Vamos suspender o atual sistema de trotinetes partilhadas em Lisboa" ("We are going to suspend the current shared scooter system in Lisbon"), Moedas wrote on social media, alongside a short video. In a live slot on the NOW television channel the same evening he said the system "as it stands is not working", and in the post he called the situation "a disgrace" that "is going to end", according to CNN Portugal.

Nothing changes yet. The suspension needs a vote of the council, and the scooters stay on the street until then.

What the mayor is proposing

The proposal would give the operators a deadline to collect all their scooters from the city. The accounts of that deadline differ slightly:

• Observador reports that, if the council approves it, operators would have 60 days to remove every device, and that Moedas expects the scooters to be gone by the end of the year;
• Jornal de Negócios reports a deadline of the end of this year or, at the latest, the end of January.

The text of the proposal itself has not been published, so the exact date will only be known once it reaches the council.

The suspension covers the shared, app-rented scooters. Moedas said the Gira bike-sharing system will carry on and be expanded, calling bicycles "a much safer" option, according to Observador. Nothing reported so far touches privately owned scooters.

The mayor's reasons

Moedas gave two sets of reasons: the use of public space and road safety.

• Abandoned scooters. He said the council collects more than 1,200 badly parked scooters a month, and told NOW that it had picked up 9,000 so far this year, as Notícias ao Minuto reported.
• Riding behaviour. He described riders going the wrong way down streets, riding on pavements and "often with two people on the same scooter", according to Jornal de Negócios.
• Accidents. He said accidents have risen 80 percent since 2023, that a significant share of the people hurt needed hospital care, and that many riders are children and teenagers, according to Observador. He did not give the underlying figures, and the council has not published them.

Why he says regulation failed

Lisbon has tried to tame the scooters before. Moedas listed the measures already in place: caps on the size of the fleets, no-go zones, geofencing, designated parking spots and speed limits. They had not, he said, worked well enough, and "there is no solution left but to suspend these services", Jornal de Negócios reported.

He said the council had reached an agreement with the operators, "but it did not work". In his account, the companies put new scooters on the street to replace the ones the council removes, which he called "a war that will never end". He pointed to Paris and Brussels as cities that had already taken a similar step.

Asked whether the operators might go to court, he said: "They can file a case, but I hope that does not happen."

Will it pass?

Observador reports that Moedas's executive has a majority on the council. He also said he expects support from the Partido Socialista (PS, the Socialist Party), arguing that the PS voted for the same measure in Braga. The PS in Lisbon had not given its position publicly by Friday morning.

Braga is the precedent. Its council voted on 29 June to end its shared scooter agreements and gave the operators 60 days to remove roughly 500 machines. Espinho ended its scheme in July and Coimbra's mayor has said the city cannot host them safely as things stand, as we reported in August. Lisbon would be the largest city in Portugal yet to take the step.

The referendum that was already under way

The mayor's move overtakes a citizens' initiative. In September the Automóvel Club de Portugal (ACP, the Portuguese Automobile Club) said it had gathered 20,000 validated signatures from Lisbon voters for a municipal referendum on whether shared scooters should keep operating in the city, four times the 5,000 the law requires. The club put the number of shared scooters on Lisbon's streets at about 6,000. That initiative has to go through the Municipal Assembly and the Constitutional Court before any vote can be held, as we explained at the time. Neither the mayor nor the ACP has said what a suspension would mean for the referendum.

The operators have argued against a ban. When the ACP launched its petition in August, Bolt, Lime and Bird said in a joint statement that "banning shared scooters would in no way solve the city's road safety problems", and asked instead for "clear and proportionate municipal rules", RTP reported. No operator had responded publicly to the suspension plan by Friday morning.

What it means if you ride or walk in Lisbon

• Until 21 October, nothing changes. The shared scooters remain available through the operators' apps.
• If the council approves it, expect the fleets to thin out over the following weeks and to be gone by the end of the year or, at the latest, the end of January.
• Gira stays. The city's shared bikes, run by EMEL, are not affected, and the mayor says the network will grow. Our September piece on the new Gira app explains how to sign up.
• Your own scooter is a separate matter. The national rules on helmets are moving through Parliament, which backed compulsory helmets at first reading on 1 October; that bill still needs a committee stage and a final vote.

We will report the council's decision after Wednesday's meeting.