A fleet of up to 150 e-scooters will be available for hire, and managed through a phone app that users will be required to download to their phones. Bookings, safety information and 24/7 multilingual customer service will all be available via the Bird Rides app.

To hire the scooter, the user must enter their personal and credit card details into the app before the scooter can leave its "nest".

Use of the scooters will be limited to people over the age of 16, and helmets will be supplied and required to be worn. Normal road rules will apply.

The scooters will be speed limited to 10 kilometres per hour on shared pathways and 20kph on roads.

"Even if the rider wanted to (go faster) the scooter will refuse to do it," MidCoast councillor Jeremy Miller explained at the September ordinary meeting.

Scooters will be "geo-fenced", meaning they will not be able to leave the trial boundaries, and there will be certain no-go areas within the trial area that the scooters will not be able to enter. The scooters will be tracked via GPS.

A financial incentive will be offered to users to encourage them to return the e-scooters to their nests, which will be placed at various sites in the trial zone.

Cr Dheera Smith spoke at the council meeting allaying concerns about the e-scooters' lithium batteries.

She said there will be a 24 hour "scooter minder", that should an e-scooter does something irregular, will "go out and find the scooter and take it home and get it fixed".

"It's a great opportunity for our tourists or locals, and perhaps some of our councillors, to be scootering around Forster Tuncurry on electric rechargeable renewable scooters!" Cr Miller said.

Mayor Claire Pontin agreed.

"I'd like to add that I think that this is a bit of innovation that we need to take on. It'll be very interesting," she said.

Personal e-scooters can only be used on private property. They remain illegal on NSW roads and road-related areas, including footpaths, shared paths and bicycle lanes.

A progress report will be provided to council six months after the trial has started, or if it is proposed to expand the fleet beyond 150 scooters during the trial. Transport for NSW will monitor and evaluate the trial.

Transport for NSW started e-scooter trials in 2022, with Lake Macquarie City Council the first to take it up. Woollongong City Council and Armidale Regional Council were due to start their trials in September this year.

Did you know? Gloucester Advocate online subscribers not only have 24/7 access to local and national news, sport, what's on and entertainment - they also have access to our print edition in digital format, with all the advertisements and classifieds at their fingertips.