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Denmark is going to be the best cycling country in the world. Cycling leads to better public health, a cleaner urban environment, and helps us reach our climatic goals. So I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways!

So sayeth Margrethe Vestager, the new Danish minister of the economy and the interior. Vestager wants to increase the share of trips taken by bicycle 50 percent in 10 years, with at least half of those trips representing a replacement of a car with a bike.

To accomplish this, she's going to sink her budget into bicycle infrastructure. "This requires that we build more and better cycle tracks and that it becomes attractive to choose the bicycle over the car."

Denmark is already a country that is absolutely crazy for bicycles. In Copenhagen, 80 percent of commuters commute to work by bicycle every day, even in winter. So this is not the fringey political stance it would be in the U.S. It might even work.