Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Do you know that the biggest CO2 impact on festivals is simply through the audience travelling to get there? In 2007 70% of people travelled by Bus or Train to get to Reading Festival. Fantastic! We want to try and increase that even more this year.

Public Transport

Coming to the festival by coach or train will also help to reduce congestion in the carparks and on the surrounding road. Travelling by coach to the festival is by far the lowest impact way if you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint. Train is the next best option in terms of CO2 emissions.

Emissions: If you travel alone to the festival by car, you are emitting approximately TEN TIMES the amount of CO2 than if you travelled to the festival by bus and three and a half times as much as if you travelled by train.

Congestion: Coming to the festival by coach or train will not only reduce total CO2 emissions, it will also help to reduce congestion in the carparks and on the surrounding roads.

Rail and Bus Plus Scheme

You can walk to site from Reading station which is approximately a 15 minute walk from the site, but if you prefer you will be able to get a shuttle bus as Reading Bus shuttle buses will take you from the station to the site and back.  Please see their website www.reading-buses.co.uk for further information and their timetable.

See also information on the Plus Bus scheme whereby you can buy your bus ticket at the same time that you buy your train ticket - www.plusbus.info/(orig)indexmain.htm

Train times, prices and availability are available from the following sources

1. National Rail Enquiries on 08457 48 49 50 or www.nationalrail.co.uk.  We suggest that you use National Rail to ask about any planned engineering works too
2. First Great Western on 08457 000 125 or www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk
3. South Eastern Railway on www.southeasternrailway.co.uk
4. Cross Country Trains on www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk
5. Virgin Trains on www.virgin.co.uk or 08457 222 333.

For more local information, you could also get a timetable from your local railway station. For those coming from the South East Reading Station is 35 minutes by train from Paddington or 80 minutes by train from Waterloo.

By Coach

National Express coaches are the greenest form of motor transport with each journey generating less than 10% of CO2 of those who travel by car. Not to mention a solution for congestion. For each coach full of people, it is estimated that this is equivalent to 25 cars off the road. So relax, let somebody else do the driving and do your bit for the environment.

Click here for more information on travelling with National Express 

Car Share

If you have to come by car because the bus and train just won’t work for you, please try and fill up all the seats in your car. As an example, if you’re driving an average sized petrol car, having four people in it will bring your impact down to just a bit more than travelling to the festival by train, and just under twice as impactful as travelling by coach. So it really does make a difference if fill up all the seats.

Figures for these calculations were taken From DEFRA July 2007 Report: Passenger Transport Emissions Factors. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/envrp/pdf/passenger-transport.pdf

Car Travel (average sized petrol car)

• 335 gram C02 per mile (1 passenger)
• 167.5 grams CO2 per passenger mile (2 passengers)
• 83.75 grams CO2 per passenger mile (4 passengers)

Train Travel (National Rail diesel trains – average passenger numbers per annum)

• 96.32 grams per passenger mile

Coach Travel (Annual average figures of coach types and carriageways)

• 32.88 grams CO2 per passenger mile.