Good to know 5 August 2026 4 min read

The Vëlodukt Ride: the free bike taxi between Belval and Esch-Brill

A free bike taxi runs between Belval and Esch-Brill until 19 September. Ten minutes each way, no ticket, no booking. I tried it during my lunch break.

The Vëlodukt Ride bike taxi parked outside MediaMarkt in Belval, its driver seated at the handlebars

There is a small covered carriage parked on the esplanade, roughly between the Rockhal and Belval Plaza 1.

It was there last summer as well. I kept meaning to try it, the way you keep meaning to do the free thing sitting on your own doorstep, and then it was September and it had gone.

It is a bike taxi. Somebody pedals, you sit in the back, and it carries you over to Esch along the cycle bridge. No ticket, no app, nothing to book. Nobody asks you for anything at all. You turn up, you get in, you go.

So today I took my lunch break and got in. Partly for the site, mostly so that nobody else loses a summer to wondering about it.

Ines

My rider was called Ines.

She had the seat set for someone taller and a way of pushing off that told you she had done this a few hundred times, which she probably has. Three of these carriages work the route. She is one of the people who make them move, and she was lovely company from the first turn of the pedals.

We went up onto the bridge and the noise of the esplanade dropped away behind us.

That is the part nobody tells you about. You expect a novelty and you get quiet.

The bike is electric, so nobody is struggling up there. The loudest thing on the whole crossing is the tyres. There are small jolts where the deck sections meet, maybe a dozen each way, and by the third one you have stopped noticing them.

The weather could not make its mind up, grey one minute and bright the next. Up on the bridge there was a breeze the whole way.

Being carried turns out to be a real pleasure. We build our lives so carefully around not needing anybody, and then a stranger pedals you across a valley for free on a weekday afternoon and you remember that being looked after is one of the nicer things going.

Ten minutes over. Ten minutes back. I would have gone round again.

The bridge

I had assumed the Vëlodukt was an old railway line given a second life. It is not. It was built from nothing and opened just before Christmas in 2022: a kilometre and a bit of bridge, seven and a half metres up on concrete legs, the longest cycle bridge in Europe as far as anyone has counted.

Built out of steel. In a steel town. Over ground that spent a century making the stuff.

That is what I keep thinking about. For a hundred years everything in this valley was built because industry needed it, and nobody was expected to enjoy the view. Then somebody decided to build a bridge whose entire job is letting people cross for the pleasure of it.

And now it carries families, and teenagers on scooters, and people going nowhere in particular on a summer evening, and on summer afternoons a woman called Ines pedalling strangers over for lunch.

You ride above the treetops with the furnaces standing behind you and the town opening out ahead. Most people only ever see this valley through a car window on the road below. Up here you are going somewhere too, just slowly enough to actually look at it.

Take somebody small

Children lose their minds over this thing, and quite right.

It is a little carriage, on a bridge, in the sky. Somebody is pedalling it. It is free. For a six-year-old that is close to a perfect afternoon and you will be hearing about it for a fortnight.

Do it during your lunch break

That is the part I would like you to notice. A lunch hour covers the whole thing, mine did, with time left over to eat.

There is room for two, so take a friend, or a colleague you actually like, or nobody at all. Ride over, eat something in Esch, walk back along the bridge if the weather is behaving or wait and ride again. It turns an ordinary Wednesday into a day where something happened.

Which is, if we are honest, most of what any of us want from a Wednesday.

The details

From Belval	The esplanade, between the Rockhal and Belval Plaza 1
From Esch-Brill	Place de la Résistance, at the foot of the station steps
Dates	18 July to 19 September 2026
Days	Tuesday to Saturday
From	12:00
Last departure, Brill	17:15
Last departure, Belval	17:30
Price	Free
Information	Escher Infofabrik, 54 16 37

The Vëlodukt Ride bike taxi parked on the Belval esplanade, with the blast furnaces behind.

Look for the flag.

Go on then

It runs until 19 September, which sounds like plenty until you notice it is already August and the evenings have started arriving earlier than they were.

Someone thought this up, someone paid for it, and someone is out there pedalling it five days a week so that you can cross a valley for nothing. That is a generous thing for a town to do, and the only way to say thank you for it is to turn up

So go this week. Take somebody with you. Say hello to Ines.

And if you have been telling yourself you will get round to it, I said that all last summer. It takes ten minutes.

Watch the video