Chestnut is one of four parks offering mountain bike trails in land-scarce Singapore. The others are Kent Ridge Park, Dairy Farm Nature Park and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Offshore Pulau Ubin also has a mountain bike park.
The anonymous cyclist told CNA it would help for the National Parks Board (NParks) to design some of its more challenging trails – such as the Bukit Timah Mountain Bike Trail – to be more “user-friendly”.
“If BT (Bukit Timah) is safer, then I guess more people won’t be tempted to go on other illegal trails because in terms of thrill factor, BT is also quite challenging,” he said, citing the limited number of trails for beginners.
On the mainland, Chestnut Nature Park appears to be the only venue offering a beginner-level trail.
“It doesn’t make sense for you to take a drop or a jump and land into a pile of rocks,” the cyclist added.
“At the end of the day, we are not idiots and we are not people who want to break the law … But it’s getting very limited in terms of the available trails and it’s also very crowded.”
Another cyclist who only wanted to be known as Barry also added that he now avoids Bukit Timah Mountain Bike trail because it gets “very, very” congested on weekends.
But he said that opening up more trails would not completely stop people from venturing off the beaten path, he added.
“If you ask me, I’d say yes it would help. But will it deter people from going into unmarked trails? No.
“Even if you have the whole island (with) trails, there will still be some people who want to go in (to restricted areas).”
