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Exploring unique country borders revealed some of the best road cycling routes I've seen: A case for adopting abandoned railways into bike paths.

Since the 19th century, when railways revolutionized ground transportation, inventions of alternative ways to get people and goods around and sectoral transformation caused many once-busy lines to be no longer in use. Yet, the effort and resources that went into laying the tracks – many of which pass through beautiful landscapes – don't have to be lost. Like a former factory can be converted into a desirable property with new life, former tracks can serve new users.

The biggest ground-based competitors to trains are cars and trucks; however, their high-throughput roads are generally much wider than train lines. To maximize the benefits of adapting abandoned railways, we have to look for something with a smaller footprint. Bikes, for instance, can easily fit even on a former narrow gauge and don't cause the wear associated with fast-moving heavier vehicles, so fixing a century-old bridge for safe bike use is more affordable. And since train lines never feature steep inclines or sharp turns, converting them for cycling can sound like a no-brainer investment. Yet, encounters with these conversions did not always do great advertising to the cause.

My earliest recollection of seeing one was in Kansas, between Wichita's Eisenhower National Airport and the busy Hwy 54. I didn't see anyone cycling there, and considering the surroundings of bare warehouses and hangars, I also did not feel any urge to try it myself. The first time I biked on former train lines was in Scotland, but while they were interesting to visit, they weren't quite practical: they went either from nowhere to nowhere (Balmossie Viaduct), had so many interruptions that it was faster to cycle on parallel roads (Wormit-Tayport), or was in a pretty grim condition (Dundee-Newtyle). Unsurprisingly, they weren't used by many folks either. But the low numbers are not the fault of the concept.

The root of the success of these conversions is the same as building a cycling path from scratch: when they are designed well, people will come. Such was the case I saw in Helsinki, where the former railway Baana (the image atop this article) sees over a million cyclists annually [1]. Still, it felt like a singular case of a relatively short track. The discovery of something more significant started after I cycled to the complex national borders between the Netherlands and Belgium on another neat conversion, the former Tilburg-Turnhout line.

Roughly halfway on the line is the town of Baarle-Nassau, where a short walk can take you from one country to another multiple times. Some houses are even split in the middle, half being in a different country. Chances are that you will find Baarle-Nassau intriguing if you like maps. I do, so I scanned them to look at the other parts of Belgian borders to see if other oddities exist. Indeed, they do and are best seen from a former railway between Aachen in Germany and Troisvierges in Luxemburg: Vennbahn. Right on, that's to be cycled!

Besides another fascinating section of the Belgian border, Vennbahn also introduced me to RAVeL in Wallonia. Finally, that is the real success story here.

RAVeL stands for "Autonomous Network of Slow Lanes" in English and has over 1,500 km of paths that used to be old railway lines or towpaths [2]. Someone could argue that such an extent is not too impressive compared with other regions; for example, the US' Rails to Trails amounts to over 40,200 km of paths [3], ~27 times more than Wallonia has. But considering Wallonia is roughly 582 times smaller than the US, there is no contest. Rather than individual examples, RAVeL is a network where one can smoothly go from one to another across the entire region, which makes the experience so much better. It is like with driving; the best is to have fun roads between nice destinations – from where one can freely pick more fun roads to continue. There is no gap in the experience.

Here are a few things that captured my attention on RAVeLs that I happily cycled on:

So it happened, RAVeLs made for some of the best stretches of cycling I did on asphalt. (Being off the pavement is a different story...) Dreams, either way.

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Thanks for reading! If you have liked this article, you might also enjoy stories from Brittany (where I cycled on a former rail line between Douarnenez and Quimper), or something else from the Blog Archives.

Sources for numbers:

1. Helsingin Baanan mittariin kilahti joulupäivänä ennätyksellinen vuoden miljoonas pyörämatka, Welling, Roosa/HS.fi (2020).
2. Le site officiel du RAVeL et des Véloroutes en Wallonie (2025).
3. About Rails to Trails Conservancy (2025).

In case you want to read more, I also found the following lists interesting:

• Rail trails in Germany, Bartoschek, Achim/Bahntrassenradeln.de (2025).
• Wikipedia's list of Greenways and paths on old railway tracks in France (2025).