Around 5,000 fewer cars on the road thanks to HIFE’s deployment at the Monegros Desert Festival.
On Saturday, July 26, a new edition of the Monegros Desert Festival took place, one of the most popular music events in the country, held in the heart of the Aragonese desert. On this occasion, HIFE was the official transport provider for the festival, coordinating an operation that enabled thousands of people to travel from different parts of Spain to the venue and return home safely once the event had ended.
HIFE’s deployment included a total of 238 buses, with departures from cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Zaragoza, Valencia, Lleida, Bilbao, and Torrejón. The city with the most departures was Barcelona, with 118 buses leaving at different times, followed by Zaragoza with 52 buses and Madrid with 23. In total, all vehicles covered more than 94,500 kilometers on round trips.
Beyond the logistical scale of the operation, the most significant figure is the environmental impact. The use of buses as a collective means of transport directly reduced private vehicle usage. According to efficiency benchmarks in the sector, each bus can replace approximately 20 private cars. This means that, thanks to HIFE’s operation, 4,760 car journeys were avoided, which would have added up to nearly 1.9 million additional kilometers on the roads.
In terms of emissions, the buses used during the operation generated approximately 2.68 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂). If these trips had been made by private vehicles, emissions would have exceeded 297 tonnes. Therefore, the difference between both options results in a net reduction of 295.16 tonnes of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere.
Pau Sabaté, HIFE’s operations manager, assessed the logistics and stated: “Monegros was a major challenge, as we had to coordinate 238 buses. The operation ran smoothly and demonstrates how useful collective transport can be for large-scale events like this.”