Overview
- Yarra City Council voted Tuesday night to terminate the nearly six-year Lime e‑bike trial and require the operator to remove all Lime bikes from the municipality.
- Council officers had logged roughly 100 formal complaints about dumped bikes, footpath riding and unsafe behaviour and presented data showing about 201 local trips per day and more than 425,000 trips since 2020.
- A tender process for a permanent contract produced only Lime as a bidder and council staff recommended against renewing the deal because of operational shortcomings and concerns about data security and financial compliance.
- Mayor Stephen Jolly and other councillors said Lime refused to take adequate responsibility for retrieving dumped bikes or disciplining repeat offenders, and the council declined to shift clean‑up costs to ratepayers.
- The council said it remains open to future shared e‑bike schemes if another operator or stronger operational guarantees appear, while neighbouring councils and some state programs pursue parking zones and other regulatory fixes.