Information on Loughborough

Download - roads in north Leicestershire likely to be busy

Posted on 11/06/2008

The M1 motorway and other major roads leading to Donington Park in Leicestershire are likely to be busy this weekend as the Download music festival gets underway.

The event, which runs from Friday 13 June to Sunday 15 June, is expected to attract up to 135,000 people across the three days and 40,000 of those will be staying at the on-site camp sites.  Many campers start arriving at Donington from today (Wednesday 11 June).

The police have been working with the organisers of Download for several months and a traffic management system has been put in place to minimise delays.  The traffic plan has been devised by SEP Limited, a specialist traffic management and car parking contractor, to make it easier for spectators to get in and out of Donington Park, and to reduce delays for other road users.

The organisers are also encouraging as many people as possible to travel by bus, coach or train and they've teamed up with liftshare.com to make sharing transport to Download a lot easier.  Shuttle buses are also being laid on to get people from Derby and Loughborough train stations.

The traffic plan is designed to keep traffic away from the village of Castle Donington in order to minimise disruption to residents.

Inspector Chris Brown, the Commander of North West Leicestershire Local Policing Unit, said; "We are not expecting major traffic hold-ups this weekend but we would urge people travelling by car to follow the signs, the routes have been carefully worked out to get people in and out of the site as easily as possible so if festival goers stick to the correct routes it should all run smoothly"

Passengers travelling to East Midlands Airport are advised to allow plenty of extra time for their journey to the airport.  In order to aid traffic flow from the event on Monday 16th June, there will be no right turn out of the main entrance to East Midlands Airport. All passengers wishing to turn right out of the airport's main entrance will have to turn left and following the short diversion.

Issued on 11/06/08 at 09:17