Apart from his dreadful use of clunky English - mangling "Copenhagen" into an ugly verb - should we applaud the intention? Is it feasible?

Experience of cycling in Copenhagen and Berlin, two great cities for bikes, indicates that it may be a bumpy path.

If Canberra is Car-berra, Copenhagen has been dubbed the world's "Best City for Bikes". The figures bear it out. According to the Cycling Embassy of Denmark pressure group, two of every five trips to work or study in Copenhagen is by bike. Two thirds of the city's population commute by bike.

But, firstly, Copenhagen is flat and Canberra is not. Our city is not the hilliest in the world - it would certainly be a lot easier to cycle here than it would be in, say, Sydney, but there is still enough hill to turn a commute into a struggle.

Secondly, Canberra is very spread out, with lots of space between houses compared with Copenhagen. In the center of the Danish capital, 7,000 people live per square kilometer and 2,100 per square kilometer in the wider city. In Canberra, the density is around 175 per square kilometer.

In a dense city of apartment blocks, cars are highly impractical. If there is parking space at your destination or near the office or home, it will be expensive. And there probably won't be.

Many don't own cars and rely on public transport, which is efficient - if you've just missed a bus another will be along soon - or they get on their bike, which will be chained in a large bank of bikes outside the apartment block.

In Copenhagen and the other true cycling cities like Berlin, only a mad person would drive - or a sane person intent on becoming mad in an endless, fruitless search for space to park.

Thirdly, Copenhagen does not have steamy summers where the mercury rises into the 40s. Cycling in a sauna is no fun.

At the other extreme, Copenhagen does go below freezing and bikes don't like ice - but the city authorities are zealous in clearing paths. And Scandinavians dress for the weather. They put on ski gloves and layers. They're used to sub-zero life.

Fourthly, Copenhagen has a network of cycling paths that are separate both from footpaths and from roads. It has 350 kilometers of segregated, bike-only, off-road cycle ways. Even on roads, cycle paths are clearly demarcated, sometimes with cars parked between the cycle route and the main road.

There are Cycle Super Highways connecting the city to the suburbs. There is even a special bridge only for cyclists in Copenhagen.

Re-engineering a city demands money. In Copenhagen, the investment has been done over a century, albeit with a big spurt in the past 40 years.

The city had its first bicycle path in 1892 and more were added as bridleways for horses were converted. In 1890, it was estimated that there were 2500 bicycles. By 1920, it had risen to 80,000.

In the 1950s, the car started taking over and the densely packed city got clogged.

With the hike in oil prices in the 1970s, the authorities decided something needed to be done. It introduced a car-free Sunday (just as the ACT government intends).

People liked it and the Danish Cyclists Federation became a political force. Protests for designated bike lanes began. Politicians bowed to the popular will and began designating cycle tracks on main roads.

The strategy now is to make cycling easy and safe. It's not about lecturing people or shaming them out of a car. It's about making two wheels more convenient than four. The true test of a cycling city is whether mothers and fathers with young children feel safe enough to cycle with the child on the back - and in Copenhagen, they do.

You see old people trundling along so slowly that you fear they may fall over. Cycling is not just for great male Danes in Lycra keeping fit.

It has worked. The city authorities measure journey times, perceptions of safety (do you feel safe on a bike?), numbers riding, injuries and other factors, and all the metrics go in the right direction.

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The city is proud. Its reports (in English, of course) talk in lyrical terms: "This never-ending flow of Copenhageners on bicycles is like a symphony of human power, and it's been 40 years in the making.

"In the 1960s, this city was just as car-clogged as anywhere else. Visionary decisions were made and the result can be seen all around you. There are few places in the world where the morning rush hour is graced with such poetic motion."

Steve Evans has cycled in Copenhagen and in Berlin. He owns a bike in Canberra but finds the roads too intimidating to use with peace of mind.