# COVID-19's Pandemic Effects on Bike Sharing Systems: A New Reality for Urban Mobility?
## 4 Discussion  
The statistical analysis of the data provided by the BS systems' operator revealed that the lockdown affected the modal choice of the residents of the three above-mentioned and analyzed Greek cities. It seems that the users of the BS systems in Igoumenitsa, Rhodes, and Chania acknowledged the benefits of using bike-sharing bicycles and as a result continued to use the bicycles even after the end of the lockdown period, although no campaigns were implemented or measures were taken as those in other European cities aiming to promote the usage of BS systems. Even though a decrease was recorded after the end of the restriction measures, the BS systems continued to have an increased level of usage six or nine months ago. The examination of qualitative and quantitative data for a longer time period, regarding the performance of the BS systems, could reveal if the users developed a new pattern concerning their habits and modal choice or if the effect of the lockdown period leading to an increased level of BS systems usage, fades out as time passes. Toward this direction, our team has addressed an official request to the BS systems operator in order to provide us with data covering a longer time period mainly after the end of the first lockdown period. Similar results to our research were found and conclusions were extracted for the cities of New York [37; 38], Budapest [39], Thessaloniki [40; 41], Nanjing [42], and the region of Sicily in Italy [43], regarding the level of ridership before, during, and after the imposition of restricting measures concerning urban mobility and specifically the usage of bicycles, the rides' duration [44], the people's perception towards BS systems due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to bicycles in general [45; 46]. Furthermore, during the early stages of the pandemic, in some cases, bike sharing expanded their memberships or improved accessibility for specific working groups [47]. However, there are several cases in which despite an initial increase in using BS systems during the first months of the pandemic, ridership declined for several months in 2020 [48; 49; 50; 51; 52; 53]. There are also systems recovering from the effects of the pandemic and mainly lockdown measures applied in many countries; for example, in the UK, the latest data show a significant recovery [54]. A study estimating the effect of the pandemic on the London BS system over the period March-December 2020 indicated that although a reduction in cycle hires was recorded in March and April 2020, the demand increased after May 2020 and even more during April, May, and June 2020 the bikes were hired for longer trips (perhaps as the authors mention due to a shift from public transit) [54]. It is clear that people have reacted differently worldwide concerning the usage of BS systems during the pandemic, making each case unique. For example, in Seoul, the level of usage of the BS system was affected negatively by the number of daily new COVID-19 cases and positively as the necessity for social distancing was becoming a reality for the residents [34]. Moreover, a study regarding the impact of