The episode in detail
Two Wheel Tuesday: from social media challenge to citizens’ movement
Two Wheel Tuesday started with a simple gesture. In 2018, Olivier de Schutter, at the time a driver with a company car, decided to take up cycling again for his daily commute in Brussels. Every Tuesday, he took a photo of himself on the way, posted it on social media and tagged three friends to invite them to do the same. The principle borrows the mechanics of the viral challenges popular at the time, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge, but applies them to soft mobility.
The original concept comes from Baltimore, where volunteers set up morning checkpoints to hand out coffee to cyclists and cheer them on. Olivier discovered the initiative through the Global Shapers, a network of young people working on societal issues linked to the World Economic Forum. He adapted the concept for Brussels, and the initial take-up went beyond his expectations. Friends tagged three more friends in turn, the chain spread, and the movement quickly became impossible to track with any statistical precision.
“I would see these cyclists in the rain. And I would think, actually I want to be in their place. Above all, I felt ashamed to be sitting there in my car.”
Cycling coaching and awareness raising: what Two Wheel Tuesday actually did
The Two Wheel Tuesday movement did not stop at the online challenge. The team of volunteers ran several actions on the ground. The checkpoints came first: every Tuesday, at the Arts-Loi junction in Brussels, volunteers handed out breakfast to cyclists and applauded them. Drivers, meanwhile, watched from inside their cars.
Individual coaching was another strand. A volunteer would collect someone interested in bike commuting from their home and accompany them to their workplace. Half an hour a week to pass on the basics: reading bike-specific signs, choosing safe routes, and the rules for sharing the road with buses and cars. This approach addressed a major barrier: many people want to take up cycling but do not dare to, either because they do not know the network or because they are afraid of traffic.
“There are huge numbers of drivers who have no idea what it feels like to be vulnerable, with a 2-tonne car clipping past you at 50 km/h.”
Olivier points to an experiment carried out in Mexico, in San Luis de Potosí, where bus drivers were put on stationary bikes while a bus passed within less than a metre of them. The unanimous panic shows the gap in perception between drivers and cyclists.
Bois de la Cambre: citizen mobilisation and reclaiming public space
The Two Wheel Tuesday movement also drove citizen mobilisation campaigns. The most striking case concerns the Bois de la Cambre, Brussels’ largest urban park. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, a two-lane road ran through the park, with cars driving at up to 80 km/h. During the lockdown, the road was closed to cars. Families, walkers and cyclists took over the space.
When the reopening to cars was announced, Two Wheel Tuesday organised weekly bike gatherings around the park. Two people came the first week. Twenty-five the second. Then a hundred, two hundred, up to seven hundred participants. Television and radio covered the event, the mobility minister came to see it herself, and around ten organisations joined the cause.
“We saw families turn up with children, dogs, people out for a walk. Life. Where before, you could do it, but on the narrow pavement with cars driving past right next to you.”
From the Vélotaf podcast to Bleen: the handover between two seasons
The last project run by Two Wheel Tuesday was the launch of the Vélotaf podcast, initially funded by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. The first season, hosted by Ermanno under the Two Wheel Tuesday umbrella, covered 37 episodes. Episode 38 marks the handover to the second season, run by Bleen, the consultancy co-founded by Olivier de Schutter and Sam de Swaef.
Victor Blanchard takes over as host with a refreshed format: shorter episodes, 15 to 20 minutes long, each built around one specific question. The range of guests widens to include campaigners, entrepreneurs, politicians, inventors and influencers working on soft mobility, urban planning and the ecological transition.
“Bike commuting is more than a transport choice. It is a genuine social phenomenon. It is the symbol of the transition.”
The bike as a lever for social change
Beyond transport, Olivier de Schutter argues for seeing the bike as a marker of cultural change. The social status long attached to the company car and the SUV is gradually losing ground. He points to the Paris referendum of February 2024 on SUV pricing in the city as a sign of this shift. Doing up an old vintage bike found in the garage is starting to carry more social weight than the latest fully loaded saloon.
This reading of the bike as a social phenomenon shapes the ambition of the Vélotaf podcast in its new season. The topics covered go beyond mobility: social inequality, urban planning, the collective idea of success, the circular economy. The bike acts as a thread running through broader shifts, with the aim of making this transition desirable rather than something imposed.
“What’s cool today is getting hold of grandad’s old bike, doing it up yourself and bringing it back to life. The codes are changing.”
