Information on Loughborough

Roads around Donington Park expected to be busy this weekend

Posted on 11/06/2009

police,constabulary,leicestershire police Roads around Donington Park expected to be busy this weekend

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

The event, which runs from Friday 12 June to Sunday 14 June, is expected to attract up to 135,000 people across the three days and 55,000 of those will be staying at the on-site camp sites.  Many campers started arriving at Donington from Wednesday 10 June. 

The police have been working with the organisers of Download for many 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. It has worked very well in previous years. 

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 as it has done in previous years.” 

Passengers travelling to East Midlands Airport are advised to allow plenty of extra time for their journey to the airport.