I also had an opportunity to pick up one for nothing -- as long as I had a cable cutter. It was initially in pretty good shape but left to rot chained to a light pole near my (DC) Metro station bike rack. I told the station manager and called the central office and got a bit of runaround. After a while, someone tagged all the abandoned/wrecked bikes with a notice that they would be removed after May 22, but nothing else happened. Two months later, the Panasonic was finally removed to make way for a construction project. It would have been a good subway runner for someone low on cash. The manager of the Metro line showed up one day to greet the riders, and I told him the story of how tempted I had been to liberate the bike from its slow death. He said "I would't have told anyone if you did."