# COVID-19's Pandemic Effects on Bike Sharing Systems: A New Reality for Urban Mobility?
## 1 Introduction
However, there were many cases of bike-sharing systems that presented a significant decrease in their level of usage due to the fear of contagion among other reasons (Santa Monica, Central Los Angeles, West Los Angeles, and North Hollywood) [6]. A questionnaire-based survey conducted by the Laboratory of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Systems of the Environmental Engineering Department of Technical University of Crete, Greece, under the framework of the Horizon 2020 CIVITAS DESTINATIONS research project, addressed to the residents of the cities of Chania and Rethemno, Crete, during the period 16-22 March 2020, revealed that the percentage of choosing bicycles as their transport mode during the previously mentioned period compared to the period of January-February 2020, increased by almost 18% [7], embossing the dynamic of the bicycle as a primary transport mode. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on bike-sharing systems is still being monitored and recorded by researchers worldwide. Surveys have been implemented focusing on collecting information regarding individuals' immediate responses to the travel restrictions during the pandemic in specific areas [8; 9] while others have covered larger areas [10; 11]. Researchers are focused on four major topics: (a) environmental quality [12; 13; 14], (b) socio-economic impacts [15], (c) management and governance, and d) transportation and urban design [16; 17; 18; 19] without excluding urban road freight transport [20]. Many of the above-mentioned research activities are focused on the impacts of implemented restriction measures concerning urban mobility in an effort to control the COVID-19 outbreak [8; 21; 22; 23] by introducing, for example, terms such as \"responsible transport\" [24] or by applying Big Data from mobile spatial statistics attempting to estimate population density patterns in order to customize applied measures to the characteristics of urban areas [25]. Based on the information and knowledge gained through a literature review on this topic (COVID-19 pandemic and mobility restriction measures), it was decided to develop a paper regarding BS systems in Greece. The present paper examines the performance of the bike-sharing system in three Greek cities (Igoumenitsa, Rhodes, and Chania) comparing the periods before, during, and after the general lockdown, based on data provided by the operator (Cyclopolis) of these bike-sharing systems. An attempt has been made to identify changes in travel behavior related to the usage of BS bicycles, aiming to assist policymakers and policy takers to better design and implement appropriate and efficient customized policies. Moreover, the authors' intention was not to develop a forecasting model or to explain horizontally how restriction measures affected the performance of bike-sharing systems, but through the findings of this paper to provide a small amount of knowledge to the researchers in the specific field and help them understand and compare travel behaviors and impacts in other cities/countries. Analysis of the provided data was performed by developing a regression model with aggregated data and thus conclusions could be extracted concerning the performance of the bike-sharing systems across three Greek cities. Based on the first level analysis and its findings, it was decided to develop a regression model using aggregated data in an effort to identify correlations among the parameters describing the BS systems' performance. Since such data were not available at the time the research took place, we were unable to deal with the modal shift in the framework of the present paper. The second section (Materials and Methods) describes the methodology followed for the data collection and analysis while in the third section (Results), the key findings of the descriptive and in-depth statistical analysis are described. Finally, in the Discussion and Conclusions section, the limitations of the study are presented, along with the main conclusions and future research.