Safer school zone launched at Rodrigo Lara School, Bogota

The Secretary of Mobility Juan Pablo Bocarejo has today launched the new safe school zone at Rodrigo Lara School in Bogota, built on the back of a Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) assessment and recommendation.

In a project partnership between the Secretariat of Mobility (SoM), World Bank, Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety and iRAP, safety countermeasures implemented on three road locations outside the school have improved it from 2- to 3-stars to 4- and 5-star safety, assessed using the SR4S app.

The countermeasures were first tested in a temporary set up at the school in March to ascertain their impact. Cones and plants were introduced to create a safe pedestrian crossing to the school, protect vulnerable users and enforce motorised vehicles to keep to a safe speed. Prior to implementation, there was no delineation, pedestrian crossing or traffic calming to protect road users.

Following successful trial, the countermeasures are now permanently in place and today’s launch celebrates a much safer environment and school journey for students and the local community.

Read more on the countermeasure trial here.

iRAP Star Ratings are an internationally recognised measure of risk on roads, with the least safe roads rated as 1-star and the safest as 5-star.

Developed with sponsorship from FedEx, SR4S is an easy-to-use, low-cost application that harnesses the power of the iRAP Star Rating for Pedestrians and combines an Android tablet/smart phone app and a Global Reporting web application. As the first ever evidence-based tool for measuring, managing and communicating the risk children are exposed to on school journeys, SR4S assesses the risk to pedestrians at spot locations informing interventions and investment to save lives.

For more success stories from the global SR4S pilot, sign up to receive the newsletter. The app has already been used to assess 200 schools across five continents and results have informed road upgrades saving lives and preventing serious injuries around schools worldwide.