And just like that, they were gone.
Overnight, more than 1000 purple Beam scooters - one of the so-called "last-mile" micromobility solutions of the ACT government - have disappeared from Canberra's streets.
The Beam app, which had been showing hundreds of scooter icons in the city centre, was displaying only two on Friday morning. Whether they represented remaining scooters or faulty data was unknown.
The Singaporean company had been given until Friday, September 13, to leave the territory after it had been found to have manipulated data and put more scooters on the street than had been permitted.
An income stream has also vanished along with the e-scooters, as the ACT government had collected $1 per deployed mobility device per day, paid monthly.
Transport Canberra and City Services received information early this month that Beam was acting outside of its permit conditions.
Ben McHugh, the deputy director-general, said the company had been authorised to operate 950 e-scooters across Canberra, including specific numbers for different regions of the city.
"These caps are in place to promote safety for other path users as well as reduce the potential for scooters to be seen as a nuisance," he said.
"We believe Beam has failed to meet the expectations of the Canberra community under their permit to operate and therefore we will not be renewing their permit to operate."
Townsville, Lake Macquarie and Brisbane have also booted Beam out.
In New Zealand, Auckland and Wellington city councils suspended their contracts with the company.
The orange Neuron e-scooters will remain in Canberra and the ACT government says it is committed to e-scooters as a form of "last mile" travel.
This is despite a Canberra Times story a year ago exposing the little-known injury issue in which hundreds more Canberrans were seriously injuring themselves on e-scooters than previously thought, and that ACT Health had made little or no attempt to understand the full extent of the injuries the devices generated.
The clinical study of Canberra Hospital admissions for e-scooter injuries presented at the annual scientific meeting of the ACT branch of the Australia Orthopaedic Association found there were 623 hospital presentations from the mobility devices over 15 months, in which some 17 per cent of riders required surgical procedures.
The largest proportion were broken wrists (43) and clavicle fractures (12), while 13 of the surgeries were classed as major procedures requiring hours of reconstruction work and costing tens of thousands of dollars.
The Australian Medical Association also expressed alarm at the injuries the e-scooters generate, placing significantly higher pressure on emergency departments.
A recent assessment of e-scooters by users also found poor attention to important safety issues, such as having sufficient tyre tread for grip and ensuring helmets were always provided.
Beam potentially faced a $2200 fine for every e-scooter it failed to remove from Canberra's public land by 4pm Friday.
