The self-locking public bike shares are often a privately funded or part-government funded initiative. These bikes are locked in docking stations installed into the sidewalk (with cooperation of local municipality), metres to buy use with payment via card and timed as soon as you take the bike out of docking station.

Siince you have to stick in your charge card or a user card, your name is tied to the bike when it's "signed" out and in use. In fact, I believe some of the public bike share systems have a microchip on the bike that allows the bike share company to track the location of each bike. For them to retrieve it back.

Hopefully Madison's system will be used often! That's great Madison has moved along.