Free Bikes in Copanhagen and Amsterdam

I was watching Steve Rick's Europe the other day. The episode was about Copenhagen. It looks like a beautiful city. What I found especially interesting was the bicycle culture there. The city has built an extensive bike lane infrastructure over the last couple of decades. There are bike racks all over the city and even more amazingly, they're stocked with free public bikes. All you need is a coin to unlock the bike and then at your destination you get the lock back. Because the bikes are unique and contain components unavailable in other bikes, theft is rare. The bikes are paid for by companies who place advertisements on them.

A friend told me that Amsterdam has a similar setup. Seattle, while it has a good infrastructure for leisure riding, is not a good city to commute by bicycle. Just as in almost every big city in America, it's dangerous to ride on streets where cars rule the road and drivers are oblivious to bicycles. The biggest problem is that there are not enough bike lanes.

I found a few good articles on the issue:

• Daily Commerce Article: Sharing the road with bikes: How does Copenhagen do it?
  My comment: one idea that I know will not work here is raising taxes on automobile purchases. Europeans can muster high taxes, but the idea is just too un-American.
• Seattle Weekly Article: Breaking the Vicious Cycle A good article about the problems bicycle commuters have in Seattle. The good news: The City of Seattle, i.e., its government, is coming out with a "master plan" for a bicycle infrastructure.
• City of Cyclists: Copenhagen's government Web site about its bicycle infrastructure.