You reported chaos on the roads again in the annual London-to-Brighton British Heart Foundation charity cycling event (The Argus, June 19).

Brighton and Hove City Council offered its usual response, to consult with train operators on taking cyclists home by rail instead of by road, although Southern is adamant there is no room on their new Electrostar trains for bicycles.

But what will happen when the South Coast National Park finally comes into existence?

Will cycling tourists be told by train operators to find another way to get home?

Every time I take the train from Brighton to Watford Junction, I see Royal Mail trains lying idle in the West London marshalling yards.

Why can't they be used by Southern and other train operators to take event cyclists home by rail? This surely would be preferable to forcing riders to use road vehicles during peak tourist season.

It would also make good publicity for the rail operators and might help bring back mail-by-rail, removing thousands of mail vans from our congested roads.

Alternatively, as the often-empty Gatwick Express apparently has as much space for passengers' luggage as the old slam-door trains with guards' vans (The Argus, June 20), why could Southern not take over Gatwick Express rolling stock and use it to convey cyclists freely wherever they want to go, while the Gatwick services use Southern's Electrostars?

-John Stanaway, Hove