Tres Cantos Council (Spain) launches ‘Safe School Roads’ project, resulting in infrastructure improvements

Image credit: Tres Cantos City Council

Project Background: During the 2021-2022 school year, Royal Automobile Club of Spain (RACE) has designed and implemented, together with the FIA Foundation, the Road Safety Plan “Caminos Escolares Seguros” in the Madrid municipalities of Guadalix de la Sierra and Tres Cantos, with the aim of creating safe access routes to schools in both towns and validating the School Assessment Toolkit proposed by the FIA with support of the SR4S.

Content originally published on Tres Cantos City Council website here

In September 2022, the Tres Cantos City Council, through the Department of Mobility, launched the ‘Caminos Escolares Seguros (Safe School Roads)‘ Plan, coinciding with the start European Mobility Week.

Tres Cantos becomes the first municipality in Spain to launch a whole city project, which involves the school community and its neighbors, for which it has had the knowledge and the Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) methodology through RACE.

RACE has used the analysis of infrastructures and the behavior of road users and has complemented it with the SR4S analysis, which numerically quantifies the road safety conditions in the school environment, where the concentration of minors and traffic conditions can generate risk situations.

With this project, the City Council of Tres Cantos wanted to focus on road safety for children, not only in school environments but also along the routes that students have to make to access from their homes to schools on a daily basis.

The mayor, Jesús Moreno, stressed the importance of “recovering spaces for children and making our city more liveable and safe, in a commitment of the government team to favour their autonomy in trips to school and contribute to healthy lifestyle habits, which are also respectful of the environment. “

According to the Councilor for Mobility, Mª del Mar Sánchez “with the results obtained, thanks to the participation of about 1,500 families who have contributed to the development of the Plan, we are taking measures to improve signage, reduce speed in school environments and promote awareness of Tricantinos on issues of road safety and safe mobility. “

Since this summer, the improvements to infrastructures and signage defined in the Safe School Roads Plan are being made and, with the start of the school year, the staff of the mobility and road safety department of RACE is giving informative talks, to explain the project process.

Read full article here from The City Council launches the ‘Safe School Roads’ for a greater integration of children in the city | Magazine 3C 360º and 5′ (360y5.es) (published in Spanish)