The episode in detail
Knowing how to fix your bike, an essential kind of independence
The Ateliers de la rue Voot have existed in Brussels for more than fifty years. Marina Cox, their director, returns for her second appearance on Vélotaf to talk about the core of their work: participatory bike mechanics workshops. The principle is simple. You turn up with your bike in poor condition, without an appointment, and repair it yourself, guided by mechanics who pass on their know-how.
For Marina, knowing how to fix your own bike is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Brussels bike shops quote waiting times of at least four weeks. Some refuse bikes that were not bought from them. Others only take branded bikes. The result: a flat tyre can leave a cyclist stuck for a month if they cannot fix it themselves.
“It’s essential. We all know of bikes sadly left to their fate because a spoke snapped or a tyre went flat.”
Five workshops, three sessions a week, zero appointments
The Ateliers de la rue Voot now run from five locations in Brussels. Each one holds three four-hour sessions a week. Two mechanics oversee each session, with professional equipment, new parts for items that wear out and salvaged parts taken from stripped-down bikes. Between 10 and 20 people turn up per session.
Repairs range from a simple gear adjustment to a full overhaul of a neglected bike. Some people come back for several sessions in a row when a bike needs more time. Others leave within 30 minutes with a problem solved and a new skill learned. Passing on know-how sits at the centre of every exchange: truing a wheel, changing a crankset, adjusting the headset.
“The idea is that you should not have to depend on anyone, and that you are self-sufficient when it happens to you.”
Fixing your bike rather than buying a new one
From their beginnings in the 1970s, the Ateliers de la rue Voot built salvage into how they worked. Rims in perfect condition were ending up at the tip, or worse. The workshop takes in bikes, strips them down and puts the usable parts back into circulation. It is a deliberate break from the logic of buying new at all costs.
This approach is not only environmental, it is also economical. Replacing a brake cable or a derailleur with a salvaged part costs a fraction of the price of a new one. For everyday cyclists on a tight budget, it is often the difference between carrying on riding and leaving the bike at the back of the garage.
“It was about recycling and breaking that logic of consuming all the time, buying new all the time, throwing away all the time.”
Getting your bike ready for touring
The Ateliers de la rue Voot also run a specific workshop to prepare bikes for touring. It teaches how to adapt a bike to road conditions: choosing the right chainrings and derailleurs for the terrain, fitting the frame out for bikepacking, and above all stripping down and rebuilding a bike completely unaided.
The choice of frame matters. Aluminium, light but stiff, is unforgiving on long trips: a break on the road cannot be fixed. Steel, more flexible and more comfortable, can be re-welded if needed. Marina tested the difference herself with her aluminium mountain bike from the 1990s. For a week, it is fine. For six months, that is another story.
Marina favours staying close to home on her trips: routes in France, loops in the Netherlands, the Meuse valley from Brussels. Cycle touring is not necessarily an adventure at the other end of the world. It is also about rediscovering what lies 50 or 100 kilometres from home.
“It’s a form of closeness, of reconnecting with a form of closeness. And the pleasure of that closeness.”
Vélo Solidaire: bikes for those furthest from cycling
The Vélo Solidaire programme began during the health crisis, on the initiative of Bruxelles Mobilité. Stocks of bikes collected by the police and local community officers were sitting in warehouses. Three associations, including the Ateliers de la rue Voot, Pro Vélo and Cyclo, were tasked with restoring them and making them available to grassroots associations: literacy programmes, local women’s groups, asylum seekers.
The programme does not stop at handing out bikes. It includes teaching people who have never learned to pedal how to ride, training in urban traffic and basic mechanics workshops. The aim is to turn people who are distant from cycling into everyday cyclists. One more cyclist, one less driver.
“The Vélo Solidaire project is aimed mainly at an audience that is fairly distant from cycling.”
