This guy's doing this with his own time and money? That's fucking awesome.

Where'd that sexy bike photo come from?

So when some drunk gets on one of these and gets creamed by a car, and his parents sue him, what then? Civic amenities are more complicated than they look at first glance.

What @1 said/asked.

do we have to start carrying bike helmets with us everywhere we go, just in case?

My college had these all over campus, and a team of students willing to maintain them, and it was great. Of course, in that location people were mostly riding across campus and not in traffic.

I love the idea of this, and the fact that this guy is just tossing something great out there and hoping it takes off is amazing. I do share Fnarf's concern, though. What happens if/when someone on one of these bikes gets hurt? Doesn't have to be because the rider is inebriated. Could be the bike is in need of a tune-up, could be operator error, could be eville car driver not paying attention....no matter the cause, I could see someone looking for an easy target for blame.

@2: What happens then?

Well, first of all, their lawyer would advise them not bother with the suit because Guy Olson doesn't have enough assets to make him a worthwhile target.

Should they decide to press on anyway, the local media would proceed to burn them a new asshole for going after a do-gooder citizen.

If they still persisted, the judge would promptly dismiss the suit because the risks of riding a bicycle are known and obvious.

Do they have a bottle of handi-wipes or purell attached to them for when Dave's done playing with the ladies...? :)

I appreciate the sentiment, but these things never really work...

What a nice guy.

Dave Blank always carries a bottle of hand sanitizer in his murse, Beetlecat.

I love my guysers! he's a sexy sexy man!

Hand sanitizer yes, but he relies on his man-wife to help him pick up other things for his murse.

I was in Montreal last month and they had the bixi system of public bicycles, which looks like ti just works. http://montreal.about.com/od/gettingarou…

I worry about squirrels using the handlebars to store things in.

Guy, you are awesome!!

Paris, France did this in the 80's. The majority of bicycles were eventually stolen, repainted, and resold in Amsterdam. Subsequently the program was dropped.

I very much like the idea, but question whether it can be truly maintained either: a) for long, or b) in an "open-ended" space (eg. a city). As opposed to a "closed" space, like Burning Man or the Oregon Country Fair.

Culturally speaking, it does give people the opportunity to exercise their best morality. Hopefully helping push us, however incrementally, towards a more civil society.

Good luck, Guy!

holy shit, now how about giving THIS guy a genius award? that's just awesome.

Spokane (aka the Lilac City) did this several years back with lilac-colored bikes. I forget how many bikes, but it seemed like they were all stolen &/or wrecked within a week.

you know what sucks, is that in europe they can do this kind of thing fine WITHOUT bikes getting stolen chopped or wrecked. amsterdam and copenhagen both have city-wide free public bikes and it's awesome! it's too bad we greedy americans can't do the same.

In Barcelona they have a public utility that has hundreds of bikes locked into racks that city residents register for and use cheaply. At night a maintainance truck drives around, fixes them and relocates the bikes from racks that are full to the empty ones. People tend to ride downhill and take the bus or train uphill so some racks are perpetually full and some are always empty. It works great and is cheaper than accomidating more cars or building more train capacity. Since users have to be registered and a city utility does the upkeep it isn't free but for a couple of million dollars you could by a thousand bikes, instal the racks and hire the staff to make it run. Users are auto debited a nominal usage fee to keep the bikes in circulation and offset some of the cost. Compared to the cost of one overpass or even a ten foot section of the tunnel this is cheap.

I just saw my first bike outside Freshy's across from Hiawatha. Couldn't help but make a little video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soOp4WEyZ…

Kinda late, but a video on the effective bike program in France: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQGqpFqgE…

Gotta love that. I used to live in W Seattle and he's right, the public transit is horrible. It's like you're not even in Seattle anymore, and people wonder why congestion gets so bad.

That being said, the best bike programs are the ones that use cheap comfort bikes made up to be hideous, and have some dedicated method to payment and theft prevention. The honor system just doesn't work.

Hopefully these bikes get some good use.