The vanishing Mobikes will be back on the streets on Friday - but there are strict new rules for using them.

The distinctive silver and orange bikes began to disappear over the course of this week, sparking concerns the Chinese firm were shipping out for good.

But when the M.E.N spoke to UK manager Steve Pyer, he apologised for the lack of communication - and confirmed they were just ‘preparing for the next phase’.

He’s now confirmed that around 200 of the total thousand bikes - which were taken off the street for maintenance - will be back out on Friday.

However, new rules mean they can only be parked in a strict 6km squared area in Manchester. And users who don’t abide by this new rule will lose Mobike points.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

It means users can ride them anywhere in Greater Manchester, but must return them at the end of their journey.

Mr Pyer said they had originally planned to start re-introducing the bikes on Thursday - but that they were still working to improve the app.

They are also tackling a glitch which is showing ‘ghost bikes’ that don’t actually exist.

Mr Pyer said: “we are making sure we know where all the bikes are so people will definitely find them. But we are coming back.”

After tomorrow, bikes will be gradually restored to Manchester and Salford in a phased way.

The ‘geo-fenced’ area where they can be parked will expand - growing to include Salford, Mr Pyer said.

Eventually, Mobike also plans to increase the number of bikes to over a thousand.

Mr Pyer added: “The trial finishes in five weeks and we’ve learnt a lot in that time.

“Bikes had become too dispersed around the city, meaning users were struggling to find them.

“Greater Manchester is a very big area and we’ve found that if we have 1,000 bikes spread out to its four corners it’s labour-intensive bringing them back in.”

Mr Pyer said the vandalism of bikes had played into this plan.

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Explaining their lack of communication with the public, he added: “It’s a bit embarrassing really. We’ve had these plans in the background but the operations team started

carrying it out before we had our communications in line.

“There’s been lots of rumours because we didn’t put the right messaging out and I’m really sorry about that. We are absolutely committed to Manchester and we met with Chris Boardman today to reiterate that. We are committed to making it better and putting our learning into place in Manchester.”

He said their goal was to have enough ‘bike density’ so that people would see bikes and decide to ride them – rather than having to search for them on the app.