September 21, 2011Dear Sir,Through the kindness of friends I recently achieved a long standing ambition and spent a week in Bermuda. Having lived in Jersey, UK all my life I was particularly interested to compare the two islands’ approaches to the challenges they share.Although I found much to admire in Bermuda it struck me that the Railway Trail is an under used resource. The day I cycled its length from Somerset to St George (alternately drenched and blown forward by tropical storm Maria) I saw no other cyclists and just a handful of pedestrians. Cycling this shady trail in balmy Bermuda should be a pleasure but the neglected state of the trail surface, the missing bridges, the endless gates to negotiate and the abundant litter and fly tipping have turned the trail into a challenge, rather than the delight it could so easily be.The day before I flew home I read in The Royal Gazette of the proposal to spend more than $70m widening the Town Cut in an effort to woo back the cruise liners that have abandoned St George’s. May I suggest that the authorities also commission a feasibility study, perhaps from Sustrans in the UK, into a proper re-instatement of the railway trail? Road trains are already circulating at Dockyard and St Georges. If cruise passengers could ride one the length of the railway trail they would consider the trip across the islands to St George’s to be a treat, not a chore. Active passengers could combine this outing with a bicycle expedition along some or all of the trail, especially if the road train included wagons able to carry cycles as well as passengers. Reinstating the missing links in the trail around Hamilton and the oil terminal and extending the trail or at the very least providing a cycle track to Dockyard will be a challenge, but will cost a fraction of the Town Cut works and leave intact the beauty of the islands at the entrance to St George’s harbour.The Railway Walk in Jersey, which follows the route of the former Jersey Western Railway, is popular with cycling commuters and visitors and has been extended to the airport and beyond. The eastern cycle network is taking longer to reinstate because the track bed of the former Jersey Eastern Railway was sold off, a mistake Bermuda largely avoided. The States of Jersey encourage cycling so as to promote tourism, improve public health, reduce motor traffic and get families out of the “school run” rut by providing safe routes to school. These days our tourism literature never fails to include shots of happy families exploring the island on two wheels. When I took my family on a Mediterranean cruise one of our favourite stops was an outing to cycle the city walls of Lucca in Italy. Surely these considerations apply in Bermuda too, with the extra and all important benefit that St George is an obvious destination for the thousands of visitors still pouring off the cruise ships at Dockyard.CHRISTOPHER SCHOLEFIELDJersey, Channel Islands