Is Bike-Sharing a Publicly Acceptable Investment for a Small Urban Society Aiming to Drama-tically Impact its Modal Shift?

One of the frameworks to promote voluntary modal shift refers to shared use mobility. Bike-sharing is an archetype of this urban planning approach. Despite its green potential and an excess of 1000 schemes across the globe, only recently bike-sharing received sufficient research attention. The paper reports on a quantitative survey of 640 responses set to examine road users' attitudes towards bike-sharing and the possibility of its introduction in Drama, Greece. Drama has never been exposed to the principle of 'mobility-sharing'. It is similar to many small South European cities in terms of size, transport culture and socio-economic characteristics, something providing this work with some generalisation merits. Most of the respondents recognised that bike-sharing could be a travel mode with pro-environmental, cost-effective and health-improving qualities and the potential to promote a more human-friendly identity for the city. Evidence is provided that people would approve a public bicycle investment even in cases where the frequency of their current bicycle use and the regularity with which they intend to use an eventual scheme is low. The lack of cycling infrastructure and the perception that currently limited road safety is provided for cyclists were identified as principal usage barriers but the pro-social potential of bike-sharing could outweigh them eventually if focused bicycle-related investments take place. The author suggests that bike-sharing has the potential to go beyond its function as a last-mile solution for metropoles and provide almost door-to-door services for smaller cities like Drama.