It's not a case of simply transfering things though. Rather, what we can do is look at those things that work, not just in Copenhagen but other cities around the world, and adapt them to suit our own needs.
Copenhagen has a few similarities with Adelaide. They are both spread out, they have similar populations and both have wide streets. The spread out point is one to note. The centre of Copenhagen has a fair few apartment buildings (as does Adelaide increasingly) but once you get out of town, you see a lot of single family houses. Have an explore on Google Streetview (and if you ever watch Anna Pihl, look at where the character Mikala lives. There are lots of areas like that).
I visited Copenhagen some time ago. I remember being distracted by how good-looking everyone was so I did not take a great deal of notice of the cycling infrastructure although I do remember a lot of bicycles around the place. Also, back then, this sort of thing was not really on my radar as is the case with many people.
I found a good post on a blog called Rambers Highway. It seems its author took a trip to Europe and wrote about their travels but then stopped abruptly in December 2010. In any event, the post is all about Copenhagen and its particular style of bike lane. It's a good read and fairly accurate I think. What it shows is what we can learn.
We have all seen pictures of Copenhagen's bike paths. They are very different from Dutch ones. They are not quite as separate from the road for one thing but intead are a half height lane in between the road and pavement. There are some exceptions of course but that seems to be a common look. The lane is subtle but from what we have seen and heard, highly effective. It is something that would be very easy to copy here on our wide roads. There is plenty of space. The problem is that it is so often taken up by parked cars - and often not very many of them. This is on Wright Street:
And this is on Frome Street:
In both cases, all of that useful space is blocked by one car.
Central Adelaide has about 68,000 car parks and so the removal of a few like this on some wide arterial roads would surely not bring the city to a standstill.
The need for clear wide bike lanes was brought home to me on my way home last night. I forget which street I was on but it was one of the many with two lanes of moving traffic on each side and a third lane on each side blocked by parked cars. For of us were waiting at a traffic light in the turning lane (you do that to allow the motorised traffic to pass you on the intersection as you pick up speed). Once we had crossed the intersection, as is so often the case, our way was blocked by a parked car. A great big fat minibus was approaching on our right and did not seem to want to give more space than about half a metre. Unsurprisingly everyone stopped. It was all very polite though - lots of "no, after you". So much for taking the lane though. Self-preservation won over that this time. Not surprising when a Toyota Coaster is looming over you.
In side streets (particularly residential areas), the approach of the Danes is again quite subtle. If Ramblers Highway is correct, there are not separated lanes on every single side street. Rather, the practice is one of properly categorising the street and installing traffic calming devices that alert various different road users to each other's presence. Again, that is to generalise but it certainly matches my recollection of my visit there.
Junction design is a constant source of frustration and fear for Adelaide Cyclists. We can again learn from the Danes and adapt. The Copenhagen blue seems now as well known as Cadbury's purple colour. It's not used on every intersection though because if it is used everywhere, people get used to it and ignore it. And so it is used only on key intersections. For me though, the important thing to learn from the intersections is that the bike paths remain until the reach the intersection. In some cases, depending on how busy the intersection is, the bike path intersects with the turning lane for cars. In other cases, it lowers to road level but that width continues over the intersection and into the bike path on the other side. The consequence is that even though strictly speaking the bike path does disappear, provided both cars and bikes proceed in the same direction, there is no conflict. It's simple but ingenious.
You can see how they do it in this picture. It shows the lane ending and being shared with the turning lane for cars. It is far from ideal but seems to work where the traffic is low enough to permit it:
On busier roads the treatment is different again. There the lanes are properly separated:
This is a rather long-winded way of saying you can achieve a lot without much effort. We're practically set up for all this and it will only take some small changes to have a profound effect.
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