The Walk21 Foundation annual conference is where experts, advocates, and policymakers discuss the benefits of walking. Walking is essential to urban mobility, so it’s vital to ensure that our streets are designed for people—safe, accessible, and inclusive for everyone.
Shanna presented in three sessions:
- TS3 Pedestrian safety: assessment, planning and design
- Safe Haven: Safe School Journeys ‘Show me the way Version 2- Country wide methodology to identify road safety risk around schools and prioritize investments’
- Enhance Safety? Say YEA!
Across these three sessions, Shanna was able to dive deep into iRAP tools to assess road safety for pedestrians, discuss how we can leverage big data to prioritise interventions and how we can engage youth to advocate for safer roads.
Shanna’s key takeaways from the event include:
1 ) The importance of systematic assessment in informing all the decision-makers in the chain of power to act. This is particularly important in cities where many departments can act to change the road environment.
2) From previous conferences, I could see the evolution in dedicated policies and walking strategies. Safety remains a crucial objective of these policies, together with inclusivity and happiness
3) Data remain a barrier. We still don’t have reliable sources for network-wide sidewalk infrastructure or pedestrian flows.
4) During the YEA workshop, we discussed many applications of the app beyond the traditional approach of using it combined with Star Rating for Schools. One exciting application is choosing routes for pedestrian buses. The app data can help understand where students feel more safe walking.
It was amazing to see presentations full of good examples, from policies to implementations, of making pedestrians from all kinds of mobilities regain space in cities and political speeches.
From the road safety perspective, we know how to make pedestrians’ travel safe. It’s all about speed, visibility, and accessibility. Starting small with school-surrounded interventions, we can reach country-wide planning to prioritise pedestrians and reduce fatalities. The new challenges, especially with conflicts with light mobility, also present new opportunities to make cities’ infrastructure more sustainable and inclusive.
iRAP has tools and methods to support these opportunities.
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