The bike-sharing operator Mobike is pulling out of Manchester this week because of “unsustainable” losses from theft and vandalism – the first time the Chinese firm has abandoned a city because of antisocial behaviour.

“Tens of thousands” of customers in the city should have their deposits and credit refunded in the next few days, the company said on Wednesday. It has already started removing the silver and orange bicycles and will transfer them to London, Oxford, Cambridge and Newcastle, where it will continue to operate.

Two weeks ago Mobike warned Mancunians that if they kept destroying its bikes the service would be withdrawn. Each month during the summer, 10% of the fleet in Manchester was destroyed or stolen, the firm said.

When Mobike launched in Manchester in June 2017 it said its dockless bicycles were “vandal-proof” – a claim taken as a challenge by a small number of people who set about proving it wrong. After a few weeks, a video of a gang hurling rocks at one went viral, and there have been frequent reports of Mobikes being thrown into the canal or sunk at Salford Quays.

Manchester was Mobike’s first launch outside Asia after huge success in Hong Kong, Singapore and on the Chinese mainland.

It is also the first city to lose its Mobike privileges due to theft and vandalism, according to Steve Milton, Mobike’s UK spokesman. The firm pulled out of Washington DC and Dallas in the US, but only because it did not have enough bikes to make the schemes work, he said last month.

The suggestion that Mancunians are uniquely badly behaved does not wash with Chris Boardman, the cycling and walking commissioner for Greater Manchester. He said Mobike’s withdrawal was disappointing but not a surprise.

“Antisocial behaviour is not a problem unique to Manchester. It has been encountered in other UK cities and other bike operators have found ways to deal with it. The problem here has been that we just haven’t seen the right level of engagement from Mobike or a willingness to work to implement tried and tested solutions,” he said.

A damaged Mobike pulled from a Manchester waterway. Photograph: Canal and River Trust/PA

Despite the warnings, Mobike abuse has continued in recent weeks. At the weekend one Mobike user spotted a family of four picking blackberries by the River Mersey in Northenden, south Manchester. A bucolic scene – until he noticed they were all on hacked Mobikes with the locks smashed off and the frames resprayed.

Some users said their £29 deposits had already been returned overnight. Others complained that when they tried to use the service on Tuesday evening they were told they would have to re-register and pay £9.90 for a Mobike pass. Mancunians have taken 250,000 trips, cycling more than 180,000 miles since the service launched, the company claims.

Subscribers will still be able to use their Mobike accounts in other UK cities and in mainland Europe, including Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Florence. The firm was considering leaving Newcastle and Gateshead but a spokesman said it had managed to get losses down to a sustainable level and would be staying on Tyneside for the foreseeable future.

Jan Van der Ven, the general manager of Mobike UK, said: “We are very grateful to the city of Manchester to have been the first city in Europe to welcome Mobike. However, after careful evaluation, we have decided to remove our bikes and refund our users. As a private company, we have a duty to ensure our revenues cover our costs since unlike some operators we do not use taxpayer money to help balance our books. Unfortunately the circumstances in Manchester have not made this possible.”

Boardman, who has held talks with Nextbike, a European operator with schemes in Glasgow and Cardiff, said: “This was always a trial and despite the negative outcome we’ve learnt a huge amount from both using and observing the scheme in action. A successful bike share scheme requires close community and partner engagement from the outset, the option for docking stations and enough people on the ground to ensure it is reliable and serving its purpose.



“I want to assure Greater Manchester residents that the learning is already being put to good use and that they can expect some very positive news in the not too distant future.”

Mobike said in a statement it would conduct a full review of its time in Manchester, and intended to submit a proposal to the council “to offer an alternative affordable future model for bike sharing that could be relaunched in partnership with the local authorities”.