Sydney's share bikes are being taken on more than 22,000 trips in the inner city each week, figures from the city's two dockless bike scheme operators have shown.
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Lime and Mobike have spruiked the popularity of share bikes as a way to get around the city as the NSW government flagged Manly as the location for the first shareable electric scooter trial.
The companies are the only share bike operators on Sydney's streets after two of their predecessors, Ofo and Reddy Go, quit the city amid a council crackdown on dumped bikes this year.
Lime, which is backed by Uber and Google's parent company Alphabet, launched in Sydney in November and has so far dropped 2000 electric bikes on the city's streets.
The company's community affairs manager William Peters said the public's response had been "phenomenal", with nearly 9000 users signing up via the app in the first two weeks.
"We've just clicked over 50,000 trips on the e-bikes," he said. The average trip was about 10 minutes, or 2 kilometres, he said.
Mobike's head of international operations, Mark Lin, said in a statement that the company had clocked more than half a million rides since its launch 12 months ago.
"Sydney is one of our most active markets in the world."
Bikes were turned over more than six times a day in some parts of the city, he said.
Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore said the figures showed there was strong demand for share bikes as a way to get around the city "despite some initial teething problems and changes in the market".
“We still need users to make sure they are parking the bikes in the right spaces and using them in a safe and considerate way, but it’s clear they’ve become a useful transport solution for lots of Sydneysiders,” she said.
The council will trial six to eight bike share parking spots in locations around Central station, Hyde Park, Redfern and Green Square in a bid to prevent abandoned bikes clogging the city's streets.
Waverley mayor John Wakefield, who in February described the bikes in his area as "just dumped rubbish", said Lime appeared to have "learnt a lesson" from the previous operators and numerous councils' criticism of them.
"It has not eliminated that problem in the eastern suburbs. There are still less of them going up the hill than coming down, but the company is redistributing them."
"We've seen a fair number of bikes hit the streets, they appear to be fairly well-maintained. They're very heavy bikes so we're not seeing as much vandalism."
Mr Peters said Lime was trialling shareable electric scooters in Queensland and had spoken with Sydney councils about running similar pilot programs in the city.
A spokeswoman for Transport Minister Andrew Constance said that Manly had been chosen as the first location to trial electric scooters from several operators – believed to include Lime and Bird – this summer.
Those providers would be exempted from road safety regulations that banned electric scooters on shared bike paths for the duration of the pilot program in that area, the spokeswoman said.
