An ad campaign from Swedish public transport company Västtrafik uses toy cars to illustrate the impact of removing 30,000 cars from the road. The toy car installation, which was built to show the insanity of bad traffic — and the impact of people taking the bus instead, coincides with a promotion offering two weeks of free bus transport.

The campaign — featuring what is probably the biggest ever display of toy cars — aims to reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions, according to the agency. Every day, 200,000 commuters in the west of Sweden travel by car. The target for Västtrafik’s campaign is 30,000 less cars, decreasing the number of daily car commuters in the region by 15%.

If all 30,000 car drivers would instead travel by bus during the two-week trial period, it would erase more than 60 football fields of cars from the region, and save approximately 2,500 tons of CO2.

"We believe that the most effective way to accelerate change is to show the alternative. By letting people who usually drive a car try our buses and trams instead, we hope that many of them will continue to travel with us", said Lars Backström, CEO of Västtrafik.

The 47-foot-long and 14-foot-wide installation took five people over 24 hours to finalize. The toy cars were rented from a warehouse, and delivered back after the film shoot.

The campaign is created by Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors.