A pedestrian bridge over Bailey’s Bay is hoped to revitalise the eastern end of the historic railway trail.Tucker Murphy, of Friends of the Bermuda Railway Trail (FBRT), said that the Bailey’s Bay bridge project is the result of a partnership between Government and the group, with FBRT raising the funds for the around $500,000 project.“The idea of the Bailey’s Bay project is it links just over three, 3.5 kilometres of trail,” Mr Murphy said. “It would use the historical length of the railway trestles going across the bay, so we hope it would be very low impact on the costal foreshore area.“The funding has been raised privately through FBRT, and it’s in partnership with the Parks Department, who are driving the project on the Government side.”He said FBRT has been working with Government for more than a year and a half on improving the trail, and has already seen some success in the western end of the Island.“We kind of tested the relationship with improvements to the West end of the trail last fall,” he said. “We put tons of mulch on some of the more travelled areas like Ord Road and by the Fairmont Southampton.“We also put down wheeling ramps for cycles on some of the steeper areas. We put trash cans on the trail and we put benches.“It’s grown from there. We’ve got a number of private donors who have joined us under the umbrella of FBRT.”He said that research has shown that the more connected sections of the trail in Paget and Warwick receiving more than ten times the traffic than the section in Hamilton Parish.“It’s probably 70 to 100 people per week versus more than 1,000 in Paget,” Mr Murphy said. “If you look at the length of each of the trails, it’s probably about 6km of continuous trail there, while the Hamilton Parish segment is much smaller. Around 2km, and it leads to a dead end.”He said that connecting the segments that stretch between Crawl Hill and Coney Island will create an unbroken segment of trail more than 3km in length, which would hopefully encourage more people to use the trail for walking and cycling.“In 2003, Government reconnected Shelly Bay to Flatts using these six prefabricated bridges,” he said. “We thought that was a good example of a successful project on the trail, and we’re trying to replicate something similar in Bailey’s Bay.“We think the trail is a great asset for free recreation and a place where people can go to walk or seek respite after work. We looked at studies in the US and the UK on rails to trails projects, and they found that for about every dollar you invest in a trail, you get about $3 return in terms of health benefits.”Along with the health benefits, he said the trail also carries tremendous cultural and tourism value, noting that it links numerous historical sites and boasts fantastic views of the Island.“We believe it’s not only a useful link, it’s also a beautiful section of trail and this link would give access to many more people,” he said.Mr Murphy also stressed they would be making the bridge as non-intrusive visually as possible saying: “Our view is to minimalise the intrusion, to make it blend as much as we can with the natural landscape.”