Brussels Mobility: 'Ending shared scooters will be a bigger disruption than them arriving'

Hi everyone, 

Hope you’re all keeping cool in the summer heat. 

For this month’s newsletter, we spoke to Martin Lefrancq, a policy advisor who’s spent eight years navigating the promises and pitfalls of shared micromobility at Brussels Mobility. I sat down with him to unpack why Brussels’ regional authorities chose not to renew its licences with top e-scooter providers this month. The decision means that starting from January 2027 there will be no shared e-scooters on the streets of Brussels. 

In our conversation, he explained why it isn’t accurate to call the decision “a complete ban” as many media outlets are reporting, how the breakdown of public-private partnerships contributed, and why private e-scooters are likely to increase in uptake following the ruling. 

We also discussed the decision’s implication for other mobility sectors such as autonomous vehicles as well as how operators can make regulators trust them.

Topics from the interview

• Why the ban isn’t actually a ban

• How private scooters will fill the gap

• What operators should have done differently

• What comes next and how this will impact autonomous vehicles

You can read the full interview with Martin here, which has been edited for length and clarity. 

About Movability

Movability provides transport consulting utilizing top-tier operators, executives and consultants. Experts include Sampo Hietanen (ex. CEO MaaS Global), Maximilian Schreiber (ex. Head of Innovation at GLS and Signal Iduna) and Peter Froede (ex. McKinsey Charging expert) to mention a few. Movability’s Managing Director is Lars Christian Grødem-Olsen, ex Country Manager and MD of TIER Mobility Norway, who helped create the new Oslo escooter regulations and popularized the term Public Mobility through his blog post in World Economic Forum with Transport researcher Nils Fearnley.

Movability has worked with clients such as Bolt, Ruter, dott, Cachet, Kolumbus and many more on projects such as Ruters MaaS app strategy, tender strategy, Go-To-Market Strategies for Europe and more.