The idea behind Ant Bicycle is simple, even elegant: download the app; use it to unlock a bike; and ride to your heart's content, for the low price of a buck an hour.

In Swampscott, though, the reality of Ant has been a bit messier.

"I don't think having dozens of bikes strewn around the community makes a great strategy," said Sean Fitzgerald, Swampscott's town administrator.

As Fitzgerald tells it, Ant's tenure in Swampscott has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, he says, the bikes — which can be parked wherever riders finish their trips — give tourists and locals an easy way to get to the T and reach the beach.

On the other hand, Fitzgerald says, Ant’s management of its fleet has been way too hands off.

"I would expect that a company had custodial care for a bike [would understand] that if the bike wound up in an inappropriate area, like the ocean, that they’d come down and pick it up," Fitzgerald said. "I don’t want that bike to be looked at as debris."

It's an issue that goes far beyond Swampscott. Throughout the Boston area, the rise of dockless bike-share programs like Ant, Lime, and Ofo has been testing our collective ability to act like adults.

In Quincy, police dragged two dockless bikes out of the ocean; only one survived. The Belmont Police Department actually told residents not to call 911 to report dockless bikes. And on Boston’s 311 site, dockless bikes just sitting in neighborhoods, and occasionally getting in the public's way, have become a frequent source of frustration.

"We want to make sure that kids, and seniors, and any of us with mobility issues have an easy way of being able to get through our streets in the city of Boston," said Chris Osgood, Boston's chief of streets. "If those sidewalks are covered with a bike that hasn’t been appropriately locked, then that’s an issue for us."

In the grand scheme of things, Osgood says, it's great news that more municipalities are making it easier for residents to get around via bicycle. Still, he stresses, dockless bikes aren't welcome in Boston proper. Instead, the city wants residents and visitors to use Blue Bikes, which requires pickup and drop-off at one of its docking stations.

"We’ve certainly shared that message many times, and we’re trying to get them more responsive," Osgood said.

Ofo's bikes may soon cease to be an issue in Boston. The company, which launched in China in 2014, recently announced that it's drastically reducing its North American operations, and will cease providing bikes in Quincy and Worcester.

But Lime bikes may soon be more prevalent, even in communities that don't want them. Along with San Francisco-based Spin, Lime is providing dockless bikes to 14 Boston-area suburbs in a new program overseen by the Massachusetts Area Planning Council.

At the moment, meanwhile, the Ant Bicycle app shows a massive amount of bikes inside Boston’s borders despite the city's pleas.

According to co-founder John Gallagher, Ant is currently working with a handful of developments in Boston that lack easy access to Blue Bikes. He says the company removes bikes that elicit a complaint as quickly as possible.

"We assign them a priority level based on what the issue is," Gallagher said. "If it’s a bike blocking a certain access way, that’s a number-one priority ... An issue like that, we can resolve probably within one to two hours."

Recently, Gallagher says, Ant's been working hard to shift unneeded bikes outside of Swampscott in hopes of maintaining its deal with that town.

One day, he adds, he'd love to see Ant reach an agreement with Boston, too.

"We actually believe that there’s room for probably two systems or more of bike share in the city of Boston," he said. "The Blue Bikes are solving one problem, but we think dockless bikes can solve a lot of other issues...such as equity and accessibility."

In other words: right now, some places that want Blue Bikes don’t get them.

The flip side, of course, is that some places that don't want Ant bikes get them anyway.