Lime, which runs the for-hire electric bike scheme in Canberra, has vowed to get tough with riders who just dump the bikes in the wrong places such as across a footpath or blocking an entrance.
"Riders who breach the rules face a progressive disciplinary policy, and in repeated or severe cases, riders are banned," the company said.
Lime can't legally fine rogue riders but it can charge them extra fees for recovering bikes they've abandoned in the wrong place, Will Peters, the head of the company in the Asia-Pacific region, said.
Those charges to the errant rider might start at $10 but rise with further transgressions, followed by a one-week ban and then the ultimate sanction: "If they are constantly doing the wrong thing, then we ban them," Mr Peters told The Canberra Times.
The company has a system for detecting exactly where one of its bikes has been left. Riders have to take a picture of the bike to end the ride - without a picture, the ride is deemed to have continued, with charges mounting on the rider's account.
Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) then scans the picture and analyses its background to determine the location. If the bike's across a footpath, for example, the rider gets a message to move it. Pictures have to be wide enough for the background to be analysed. If the AI can't tell where the bike is, the rider is asked to take a second, wider picture.
The company had "on-street operations teams" to retrieve bikes parked badly.
The company also said that its bikes had a maximum speed of 25kmh. The company could reduce that further in parts of Canberra which become congested with pedestrians, say because of a concert. "We can do that in 15 minutes," Mr Peters said.
The company uses geofencing, where bikes can be programmed not to operate in designated areas. Lime said it "allows us to restrict vehicles from entering certain zones, enforce speed limits and slow vehicles in high-pedestrian areas. All Lime vehicles have built-in GPS technology that allows their location to be tracked at all times".
Mr Peters said it was not in the interests of the company to have riders of its bikes behaving badly. Its standards were high, he said: Lime bikes, for example, had insurance cover not only for the bikes themselves but also for the riders.
Lime's strident defence of its system comes after owners of private e-scooters complained that the arrival of for-hire e-bikes has made Canberra's streets and paths more dangerous.
On top of that, an inner-city council in Melbourne has just banned Lime e-bikes.
"There are two issues here," the City of Yarra deputy mayor was quoted as saying. "Shared e-bike users who refuse to follow the rules and show no consideration for others, and an operator which has demonstrated it cannot or will not manage its operations so that the community members are safe on Yarra streets."
The ACT government said it was "aware of the City of Yarra's decision regarding Lime's shared e-bike scheme in Melbourne".
"The circumstances in Yarra are specific to that council and its contractual arrangements with the operator," the government said.
It said that Lime's permit in Canberra required the company "to address devices left in dangerous or sensitive locations within two hours, and other improperly parked, tipped-over or faulty devices within 24 to 48 hours, depending on the circumstances".
Lime got the contract to run both e-scooters and electric bikes in Canberra in March this year with a start date in April. From 2020 until then, only e-scooters were for hire, under two contracts, one with Neuron and the other with Beam.
Beam was kicked out after it emerged that it had been running more scooters than it had registered with the ACT government, so depriving the public purse of revenue.
