The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our cities in monumental ways with no sector likely being more severely impacted than transport. Lockdowns, physical spacing, transport restrictions and stay-at-home guidelines have transformed personal mobility and highlighted the mistakes of an unbalanced pro-car culture that defined a century of urban planning. One immediate effect of the virus in relation to travel demand and supply was the emergence of active travel modes because of their unique ability to provide a socially distanced way of transport. Cycling is one of the modes that has enjoyed significant attention. Numerous cities have reallocated street and public space to cyclists and introduced pro-bike interventions like pop-up cycle lanes, e-bike subsidies, free bike-share use and traffic calming measures. This newly found outbreak-induced momentum creates an opportunity to establish a new ethos that allows the promotion of potentially permanent strategies that may help cycling to be (re-)established as a robust, mainstream and resilient travel mode for inner city trips and not as a second-class alternative operating under the automobile’s giant shadow. This paper provides a state-of-the-art description of the anti-COVID cycling-friendly initiatives that have been introduced globally, the successes and failures of these initiatives, the lessons learnt that can help us redefine the bicycle’s role in local societies today and a best cycling practice policy guide for planning a more bike-centric future.

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The city of Rethymno in Crete is the first Greek city to host a Dockless Bike Sharing System (DBSS). This is a scheme that means to promote sustainable mobility and help mitigating high levels of car traffic induced particularly during summer by a consistently increasing number of tourists. The present paper examines the efficiency of this DBSS aiming at: a) analysing the current usage patterns, b) identifying and discussing the various reasons that encourage or deter its usage and c) capturing a few key user perceptions reflecting and affecting scheme acceptance and usage. The study adopts a mix-method approach consisting of secondary data analysis, field observations and a quantitative survey, completed by 534 DBSS users. The findings illustrate that DBSS is used primarily for short-distance trips (up to 1,5km) and very short rentals (up to 15 mins). Traffic safety concerns and limitations in the existing cycling infrastructure are two of the factors adversely affecting the scheme's usage, since many questioned whether the scheme was an effective investment under the present situation with the given constrains of Rethymno's transport system. The majority of both frequent and occasional users thought that the scheme is affordable, easy to use and suitable for both tourist and local populations. These findings constitute the first ever footprint of DBSS usage in Greece and can be used as an input for delivering appropriate policy interventions in future urban transportation strategies looking to promote and reinforce bike sharing usage and increase cycling uptake. The paper also offers valuable guidance to mobility providers about how bike sharing businesses can prosper long-term in an environment where shared mobility schemes constitute novel socio-technical interventions.

Transport systems are capable of contributing to the economic robustness of a geographic area and the well-being of its inhabitants via the supply of the necessary assets for the mobility of people and goods. However, transport projects have the capacity to produce several negative externalities such as water pollution, air pollution, barrier effects, noise, and ecological impact, which affect the quality of people’s life. Considering these facts, the main purpose of this study is to indicate methodologically how the negative externalities of transport are interlinked, so that to promote sustainable mobility development. This paper reveals via the method of structural analysis, the interrelations between the negative externalities of transport, firstly to organize them hierarchically and secondly to evaluate the potential of sustainable mobility strategies concerning the co-benefits generated by their implementation for society. The results show that the negative externalities of transport are not isolated phenomena; on the contrary, they are interlinked and can be organised hierarchically according to the relationships between them so that certain public policies can be prioritized and the negative impacts of transport can be tackled more effectively. The most critical negative externalities are the invasion of public space for the construction of more roads, along with road accidents, congestion, and local air pollution. On the other hand, the most important group of strategies for sustainable mobility are the ones oriented to urban design, and more specifically to transit-oriented development.

Through the last decades, the development of technology was rapid. As a result, changes in a series of sectors of human life have been observed. One of these sectors is spatial planning, where new applications contribute towards its skillful application. Especially, in the sector of public participation in urban planning procedure, an urge of motivation of the public is noted in order to participate as an active participant who collects data, creates maps, suggests ideas and, finally, accepts or not a design proposal. In that context, this research paper investigates how new technologies contribute in the promotion of community engagement in urban planning. In a parallel manner, this paper attempts to locate the effects that are expected to have technologically advanced applications in participant planning in the local community. In order to examine the above issues, an international literature review occurs and institutional guidelines towards this sector are investigated, in European level. Furthermore, the investigation of case studies is utilized in order to establish a guide of line practices and locate the effects that presented similar policies in societies that implemented them. All the above contribute to an ex-ante evaluation of the application of such practices in Greece, in order to find out how much usefulness will their integration provide to the procedures of spatial planning of the country.