Happy World Car Free Day!

Hello Supporter

Today is World Car Free Day, a chance to celebrate car-free travel and the benefits of reducing traffic: friendlier streets, cleaner air and a greener future.

There's much that needs to be done to improve the alternatives to driving, and this is something we work on all year round: pressing the Government to invest in public transport, walking and cycling and make them available to more people. You can read about this in our new impact report.

But this World Car Free Day, let's talk about the difference individuals can make. We've been helping the rail industry with some research, working out how much carbon people can save by switching journeys from car to train, and we've uncovered some pretty amazing figures.

We found that switching one return journey from car to train* saves the same CO2 as a person...

• Recycling for four weeks
• Or doing 55 loads of washing at 30 degrees rather than 40.

And if we all make a small switch, the impact can be huge. If every driver in Britain switched one return journey from car to train*, just once a year, it would save the same amount of CO2 as...

• Switching off half of the UK’s street lighting for a year
• Insulating 265,627 homes
• Or recycling 450 Olympic swimming pools of recyclable rubbish!

These figures show the amazing difference we can all make by switching a journey. And of course, train travel has other benefits too, as these passengers told us:

This World Car Free Day, why not share these simple journey changes with people you know – you could forward this email, or follow the social media links below to share one of our posts. Or better still, book a train journey with a friend or family member!

Enjoy the day

Jess

Jess Fitch, Head of Digital Communications, Campaign for Better Transport

*The journey distance we used for this comparison was the average distance of a train journey. See the research methodology