Isle Of Wight Festival Travel

Isle Of Wight Festival Travel

Did you visit either the Isle of Wight Festival or the Isle of Wight Bestival last year? Where you one of the many thousands simply stunned by the travel chaos? Were you one of the people in the estimated crowd of over three thousand people queuing for buses in Cowes just to get to the either the Bestival or the Festival. If you were then read on. There may be a solution.

In East Cowes many people coming in by car experienced huge problems with 20 minute journeys taking 2 to 3 hours each way instead, this resulted in many people missing ferries and then having to re-arrange crossings only to find they were all full, cars could not move in or out, so other people, that were heading for the ferries later in the day also missed theirs.

Many people also came over as foot passengers to East Cowes only to find the traffic was so bad they could not get a bus to the Festival or the Bestival events. So they then took the chain ferry over to Cowes, this then resulted in an estimated 3-5,000 people queuing up for buses in Cowes.

Each bus only carries up to eighty people, so you can imagine the length of the queue just to get on a bus, this resulted in a high level of general frustration with extra Police having to be drafted in to avoid people queue jumping.

Whilst there are plans to alter the traffic flow in East Cowes for both events to try and ease this problem, the numbers of people attending both events have risen again for this years events. This is highly likely that the same problems could occur again.

Clearly this is not putting many people off with both events being a sell out, however people are frustrated at taking 3 hours to get on a bus with many having already queued for upwards of two hours to get on a ferry, this has resulted in potential travel times of 6 to 7 hours, and that does not take into account their travelling time taken to get to Southampton prior to getting on a ferry.

So what is the solution to this? Well one solution would be to run water buses from Cowes to Island Harbour Marina which is only five minutes walk from the Festival entrance, however none exist in such capacity to cope with the crowds.

However we are pleased to announce the Bestival Transport Express which will provide high speed RIBs across the Solent from Southampton direct to Island Harbour Marina which is only 5 mins walk from the Festival site. The estimated journey time is around 30-35 mins from Southampton saving potential travellers around 6 hours each way. If you would like to find out more then visit Isle Of Wight Festivals transport.

by Richard Allen; Thursday, June 9, 2011 @ 09:27 AM [160]

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