The twelve men and women who explain how to repair a punctured wheel and adjust a derailleur were not necessarily fans of the bicycle when the hazards of a chaotic life offered them a one-year place at the Maison du Vélo in Saint-Denis, in the north of Paris. Very quickly, most of them became. And above all, with the small team that supervises them, they are among the best placed to talk about the development potential of the bicycle in working-class neighborhoods. Its brakes too.
The place, neither a store nor a workshop but all at the same time, overlooks the rue Gabriel-Péri, from where we can hear the lookouts from the neighboring city. When the association Etudes et Chantiers Ile-de-France moved there, in 2015, the idea is to reintegrate people far from employment, but also to make cycling “Accessible to a population for which it is not necessarily obvious”, explains Elsa Weber, communication manager of the association. The experiment, initiated at Les Ulis, in Essonne, has been extended to other priority neighborhoods in the region.
In exchange for an annual membership of 20 euros, families can afford a bicycle collected at the waste reception center, in the cellars of buildings – an average of 200 per year – and which employees have repaired. Count 65 euros, maximum, for an adult frame. Ten euros for the child model. The card also gives access to self-repair workshops.
Some 300 families have been convinced. “We are in a neighborhood where people are far from everything”, explains Redouane Bernaz, technical supervisor. “Sometimes parents come to pick up a bicycle for their child, and they start looking, asking questions. There are still cultural barriers, but we are opening up the field of possibilities to them. ”
Introduction to mechanics
Here, adults, and especially women, are more likely than elsewhere not to have learned to pedal when they were young. This is one of the reasons the team wanted to import Belgium the project “A bicycle for 10 years” the principle of which is to allow a child, from 3 years old, to receive a first bike and then exchange it for free as he grows up. By the way, each return to the workshop gives rise to an introduction to mechanics.
But the good Belgian idea has not yet had all the expected success in Saint-Denis. In four years, out of the 80 girls and boys selected to receive a first bike, only about twenty have gone to the second model. And none, for the moment, on the third.
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