It promised a new way of bike riding in New York City — GPS-tracked smart bikes that would rent for as little as $1 and did not have to be picked up or returned to fixed locations.

But before it could even start, the company that operates the bikes, Spin, canceled a demonstration project in the Rockaways in Queens after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from city transportation officials. A news conference to welcome the neon-orange Spin bikes instead became a rally to bring them to the beachside community complete with ceremonial rides along the boardwalk.

Spin’s unsuccessful effort comes as a new generation of tech-savvy bike companies are vying to make riding less expensive and more convenient, competing with more established bike-share programs in the process. Instead of heading to a docking station full of bikes, riders tap a mobile app to locate the closest bicycle left by a previous rider on a street or sidewalk, or in another public space. They typically scan a code on the bikes or punch in numbers to unlock the rear wheels. Once riders get where they are going, they find a place to park the bike, and lock the wheels again to deter theft.

These so-called “dockless bike” programs aim to let customers ride on their own terms, and are similar to the flexible car-sharing program car2go, which allows drivers to leave cars where they can find on-street parking within an operating area. The dockless bikes can be rolled out more quickly and easily than bike-share systems that rely on a network of docking stations, which are expensive to build and take up valuable street and parking space. In Dallas, which had struggled for years to fund a bike-share system, there are now about 300 dockless bikes.