Paris is our one of our largest markets, and rightly so: I saw a Dott within a minute of arriving from the airport. I emerged from the metro underground at the end of the school day, and saw a teacher take a Dott bike as they left the building. I paused for a moment, realizing this was my first time seeing someone else on a Dott, for a commute. It was so exciting that I stopped and turned around to watch (maybe a little creepily?) from a distance.
I lived in Paris for a month: virtually no tourism, mostly commuting to and from work, meeting friends. I felt like one of our product user personas I’ve always read about: Always in a rush, budget-conscious, young, female, and commuting. I used our monthly pass. Because I wasn’t afraid of the traffic – perhaps a bit out of the norm for my demographic – I actually used our vehicles extensively. It was my primary form of transportation when I stayed in Paris, exchanged only for metro rides when I needed to go outside of the city ring — or if it rained. (More on that in a bit.)
And I felt the user pain. My first commute to work had me interact with our parking saturation prevention feature, which I hadn’t yet encountered in other markets. And boy, was it painful: picture me flying on a scooter at prime-time rush hour, my pants billowing in the wind like a strange flag for a micromobility revolution. I arrive at the parking spot I had in mind — it’s full. In the minute it took me to get to the next closest, that one had also filled up. Third time’s the charm — and I sprint to my meeting.
PARIS, APRÈS-COVID
I last visited Paris in 2016, and could visibly see that a lot had changed since then. There were many, many more two-wheelers, on streets that now supported it. At first glance it looked like roads were retrofitted so that one direction of traffic flow had been wiped and replaced with bike paths. I looked this up and realized that’s quite literally what happened: over the pandemic, the city set up “coronapistes”. I couldn’t make up my mind on whether to be happy that there were bike lanes at all, or upset that some were so haphazardly put together I didn’t know if they were real bike lanes. I couldn’t decide whether to compare Paris against metro-heavy Madrid, or to bike-heavy Amsterdam: Truly, it felt like I was walking into a city under construction, transitioning from cars to bikes. I’m not the only one who feels this; other journalists and bike enthusiasts have reported the same.
I thought to myself: Is this the puberty Amsterdam went through in the 70s?
Paris is now host to a melange of dedicated and shared bike “paths”. The bike markings on the ground were consistent in some places –nonexistent in others. Dedicated paths switch from one side of the road to the other — occasionally bidirectional — maybe in the median — sometimes not even on a road. I had no idea how to turn, and it was impossible to know where to look.
Even signs themselves were ambiguous: I didn’t notice the difference between bike and scooter parking until my coworker pointed out the slightly-smaller wheels on the ground markings. I guess construction by-laws also haven’t changed to require bike detours yet, because at one point I was stuck rushing to catch a bus and needed to cross a 6-lane highway, lifting the 35kg bike up and down curbs that were a foot tall. As I dodged speeding traffic, I imprinted into my mind that practical viability of micromobility is a combined effort from everyone.
If the infrastructure wasn’t chaotic enough, Parisians made sure to plow through streets like it’s Mad Max: I had never seen such chaos at intersections since pre-2008-Olympics Beijing. I once followed my Paris-born-and-bred coworker once during rush hour traffic and he fearlessly flew on our signature blue Dott scooter through intersections, easily the fastest vehicle amongst the slow-moving jam. He was the exception though: Everybody was very quick to assert their traffic dominance – unless you were a biker.
BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN
In my 4 weeks biking there I got yelled at many, many times. Pedestrians take up the entire roadway to compensate for the teensy sidewalks. I, but a wee biker, would delicately navigate around them as they strolled in the middle of the street, and still get a stream of cuss words. My aggressive Amsterdam-biking habits probably didn’t help, though it grouped me with the wild-card two-wheelers. On scooters, I saw an astounding amount of dual-riders (which is banned) more than anywhere else.
Simply put, two-wheels submit to pedestrians and cars. I had people yell at me even after accepting my demotion to the bottom of the traffic food-chain. Sometimes it didn’t even feel personal, with pedestrians yelling at the sky in exasperation at the very existence of bikes. I once had a driver accuse me of hitting their side window. I found that hard to believe considering I was walking my bike… because they had blocked the bike path with their car. I couldn’t even blame them, though: the markings were so faded, I only knew what to look for because Google Maps told me and I had followed the biker before me.
I started out on e-scooters, but quickly switched to bikes. Functionally, being a scooter-rider had me feeling a bit too exposed to the giant metal killing machines I rode alongside, who were all too zealous with invading my personal space. When the bumps in the road shifted my glasses down my face, I had to pray every time I let go of one handlebar to raise them back up quickly so I wouldn’t stop traffic. The real nail in the coffin for me on scooters was the public scrutiny towards a scooter-rider felt a little more personal… people just seemed to hate me. Or maybe it’s just Paris? They did, after all, run an election to ban shared scooters…🤷♀
I had no such problems on bikes, with larger red wheels and more visibility… though the latter almost to a fault, as I felt like a little like a peacock.
(It’s most definitely not Paris that hates scooters. London requires you to be 18+ with a driver’s license to operate a scooter. But a bike that’s twice the mass? 16+, no license required.)
À LA (TRANSPORT) MODE
Unfortunately, outside the people-problem the vehicles also had their own hardware problems. Like Seville, the tiny wheels of scooters just didn’t cut it on the omnipresent cobblestones and cracked pavement. With four weeks of riding, there were a few more edge-cases I ran into.
Biking in the Parisian rain, I would skid out on the pavements as soon as I braked. Thankfully, I dodged hitting people the 3 times it took me to learn how to squeeze the brake just lightly enough so it didn’t decelerate too quickly to cause skidding. (I have no confidence the next user would have been as coordinated).
Sometimes the bike wouldn’t power, so I could go from pushing the heaviest bike in the world, to flying like the wind. E-bikes simply weren’t as predictable as a regular mechanical bike… each time I picked up a new bike it really felt like I was riding a horse, an independent being with its own set of quirks and personality, that I had to adapt to.
Similar to what I saw in Madrid, Paris has a very strong metro system. Even the culture is built around it: in conversation, for example, many folks would use subway station names to share where they lived. Most of the city is bikeable within 20-minutes… but the metro competes at 1.70e per ride, extensive coverage, and fewer split-second life-threatening decisions. Understandably, it’s a hard sell for most people to switch modes.
And yet — despite all of this, Paris was the only city I had visited in all of Europe where I saw multiple people, every day, riding a shared micromobility vehicle. Further poking around makes me wonder if Paris’ city population density of 25000/km² — dwarfing the 5000/km² of Madrid or Amsterdam — is to blame here. It puts Paris in the leagues of Asian megacities, where micromobility is thriving (Beijing example). (Poking around there’s lots of interesting correlations on this value, alongside city area. Maybe for another article, though ;) )
Contrary to the other cities I actually quite liked using our service in Paris. I could almost always find a bike wherever I was. Oftentimes I could take the same bike back, pre-adjusted seat and all, because nobody else had touched it yet. It was a little perk that made it feel akin to a personal bike… then the inevitable doubt that creeped into my mind was, why add the extra steps of sharing? When I think about actually living in Paris, I’m not so sure I would “bother” with the shared bikes. On the other hand, not worrying about vandalism and theft nor maintenance is also a (often overlooked) perk.
Another benefit of riding our vehicles that I quickly learned I could count on was that our batteries were always charged, and in the city centre (where I would normally pick one up) I could almost always guarantee I could find a functional bike. Behind the scenes, I got a chance to visit our warehouses to understand how this came to be.
OPERATIONS, AT SCALE
Paris is our largest operation, and so things looked and worked a little differently than the warehouses I had been to up till this point. One warehouse reclaimed carpark space, as we did in Madrid. The other warehouses were larger than any I had seen until this point. Each complemented one another very well: the larger ones handled bulkier vehicle swaps and sweeps of battery work, and the more central warehouse served as a closer stop point for hyper-local ops. This distinct division of work is unique to Paris, whose operations were at scale enough to warrant it.
Baptiste explained how every charging port we had needed to constantly be in use. We had fewer ports than vans, so it was critical that we kept the vans charged. Whether it was vans or scooters, bikes or cargo bikes — it was clear all of our operations relied heavily on electricity.
The heart and soul of functional Dott vehicles are the batteries, so accordingly each warehouse had batteries either charging, charged, or to be charged. There was an entire area in one section of the warehouse (larger than the Malaga warehouse) that was custom fireproofed just for battery charging. Hundreds and hundreds of wires lined the walls, each plugged into outlets scattered amongst the labyrinth. Most other warehouses I had been to at this point only had heavy duty blue cabinets… modular, but financially unreasonable at this scale. There was a smoke alarm system tied to a security camera in case explosions happen. Madrid’s “cave” felt so close, yet so far.
THE DRIVER BEHIND THE WHEEL
Our warehouses each had a mix of transportation methods themselves to drive (ha) our operations: Vans, mostly electric; Cargo bikes, like those the Dutch carry their children and dogs in; and a few different modes in between.
The Urban Arrow cargo bikes were a relatively new addition, part of Dott’s mission to reduce emissions — not to mention they were immensely more versatile than vans. I saw a cargo-biker on the job load a trunk full of batteries, then watched him precariously but fluidly pedal up the car park ramp.
I convinced Baptiste, the city manager overseeing the warehouses, to let me try. He let me ride an empty bike but I couldn’t convince him to let me fill it with batteries like the real deal.
As in Madrid, it was for the better.
He reassured me saying even professionals quit after a short tenure because it’s so difficult to maneuver the heavy batteries on the bike streets of Paris. Even to my Amsterdam-adjusted eyes, where parents take hoards of children in the exact same bike setup, I agreed it sounded like a nightmare on the aforementioned bike-path-chaos of Paris.
CLOSING THE LOOP
We also had recycling in the large warehouses which was the first time I had seen them. In our France markets we had a collaboration with recyclers which made this possible. And it wasn’t just hand-waving and presentations like I’ve seen before: in the warehouse there was very clearly a sizeable area set aside for sorting and recycling. Some of the components still seemed a step removed from full recollection, but the stock was still leagues better than what I’d seen for residential recycling.
Even so, the huge, human-sized bins full of scrap reminded me that industrial processes are where the real numbers get moved. Each of the 4 foot bins fill up within a month. It was already May when I visited.
The warehouses also upheld the “reuse” and “repair” philosophy, a key loop in a circular business model. In Paris this was a bit more obvious given the larger scale: substantial piles of cracked baskets sat on standby for re-‘welding’ so that they could be used again (thank you, thermoplastics!). Bins of motors were ready for repair as well, though unfortunately the procedure was too complex for most staff. Baby steps!
Of course, when you can’t reuse, or recycle, you… burn? At least that’s what protestors did to 20-something of our bikes and scooters. (As of writing, more have happened in recent riots). The team had one such scooter, far from the depths of repair, on display in their little museum of estranged vehicles: it was completely mangled, and what should have been solid looked like liquid frozen in time, from handlebar to deck.
Reduce, reuse, anyone?
SAME SAME… BUT DIFFERENT, I GUESS
Baptiste, our Paris city manager, told me how getting a warehouse closer to the city was not only beneficial in optimizing city operations, but also granted a foothold for operations into the surrounding suburbs. Dott isn’t the only beneficiary in this, however.
Aubervilliers is a suburb not even a 30 minute bike ride from the 1er arrondissement (city center), located just outside the Périphérique. It would make sense for residents to have access to such a service. But because it is under different jurisdiction, the conversation to expand there was with an entirely new set of stakeholders.
This overhead isn’t limited to Paris: London’s boroughs makes for an even more colourful mosaic of zones, totally oblivious to where a commuter would want to travel through. Tokyo’s shared micromobility often sits hidden on private property. None of this makes sense to a commuter who travels between places, blind to these invisible borders, just as we saw with the arbitrary scooter vs. bike parking spots.
When done with proper collaboration, the benefit of an expansion isn’t limited to the profit of private operators.
Our Paris team reached out to the community and enriched community relations, connecting with high-schools to support apprenticeship programs and inviting the council members to see the warehouse for themselves. This camaraderie thus convinced the region to allow vehicles in their jurisdiction, complemented with the necessary, ample parking. And so demonstrates a prime example of best case scenario in this industry: synergy between operator and municipality to ultimately serve the community’s mobility. The expansion made for less no-go-zones in areas that would benefit most with more transportation options.
I was also reminded that the ground team are the real frontline workers in this industry. Yet in Paris they were deprived of a vote on April 2nd because so many of them lived outside of the vote-eligible region (constrained to within the city). Frustratingly, they are also the most impacted out of everyone as a direct result of the shared e-scooter ban.
Everybody had initially suggested to only visit one of the warehouses, but I’m so glad I visited all three. It was really insightful to see the nuance in how each specialized and complemented one another to result in the end user’s fully charged Dott, ready for their journey.
Part 1: Intro & Seville
Part 2: Malaga
Part 3: Madrid
📍 Part 4: Paris
🛴 Part 5: Not the End
Tour de Dott Takeaways
