New figures from Greater Anglia have shown that carbon emissions in the East Anglia area head in the right direction when people switch from car travel to rail travel.

To mark Car Free Day, which is on the 22nd September, Greater Anglia had five of their most popular routes put through a carbon calculator to find out what savings can be made by choosing rail travel.

The calculations have shown that over 8.5m people travelled on these routes between the 1st January 2022 and the 31st August 2022.

These passengers saved a huge 62.7m kilograms of CO2e from being emitted into the atmosphere.

This is the equivilant of 10 million trees growing for 10 years.

The routes that were calcualted were

• London  – Stansted Aiport
  • 2.8m passengers
  • 23.8 million kgs saved
• Chelmsford – London
  • 2.2m passengers
  • 15 million kgs saved
• London – Shenfield
  • 1.4m passengers
  • 6.5 million kgs saved
• Colchester – London
  • 1.2m passengers
  • 14 million kgs
• Cheshunt – London
  • 992,000 passengers
  • 3 million kgs saved

The calculator has been made available on the Greater Anglia website: greateranglia.co.uk/carbon-calculator

For most journeys, the calculator also revealed that travelling by car emits four times more CO2e than trains do.

For example:

• A journey from Norwich to London Liverpool Street saves 28.14 kg of CO2e (equivalent to powering a house for 32 hours)
• A journey from Colchester to Clacton-On-Sea saves 3 kg of CO2e (equivalent to boiling 42 kettles)
• A journey from Bishop’s Stortford to Tottenham Hale saves 4.84 kg of CO2e (equivalent to powering a house for 7 hours)
• A journey from Southend Victoria to London Liverpool Street saves 7.68 kg of CO2e (equivalent to boiling 109 kettles)

Greater Anglia’s Environment & Energy Manager, Stephanie Evans, said, “These figures show just what a difference people can make to their carbon footprint when they choose to travel more sustainably and go car-free.

“Rail is a much greener way to travel that offers a convenient, comfortable alternative to the car and can help reduce congestion and pollution in our towns, villages and tourism hot spots.

“We are constantly working to reduce our emissions, become more energy-efficient and increase biodiversity at our stations – and our new fleet of trains will contribute even more thanks to their more environmentally friendly features which reduce CO2 and particulate emissions in the region further still.”