School No. 2: Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
Project status
COMPLETE
Upgrades include:
- Additional pedestrian crossings marked
- Speed humps installed
- New high-visibility road signs
- Creating dedicated loading spaces and pedestrian areas.
School no. 2 was selected based on crash data mapped from across Sumgayit City in the last three years. Further assessments, surveys and site inspections were carried out with key stakeholders, including the school leadership. School no. 2 was selected due to its location in an area with poor pedestrian infrastructure, heavy traffic, and high vehicle speeds. During the summer of 2022, it was also the site of two incidents involving child pedestrians which led to one child being fatally injured.
In partnership with EASST and Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI), our local partners AMAK worked closely with the Sumgait City Police and local engineers to develop plans for the infrastructure changes to ensure they meet both local road safety regulations and international best practice. The plans were based on the GDCI street transformation methodology which looks at street design from the perspective of children and introduces temporary, low cost, interventions that involve local communities, and that have been proven to reduce the risk of road traffic crashes as well as improve air quality and child health more generally.
The plans were approved by the State Road Police and the transformation was completed in September 2022. Within a few short weeks we recorded significantly slower vehicle speeds and reduced congestion in front of the school.
To enable other groups to replicate this work at other sites in the region and share the lessons learned from the transformation at School No.2, GDCI have produced a toolkit covering issues ranging from site selection, understanding local contexts, design development, and installation.
The toolkit will be available to stakeholders in Azerbaijan and may be used internally by EBRD as part of capacity building efforts for other projects. It can also be made available to other donors and shared with Road Safety Observatories and other interested institutions for use in other countries as part of national road safety investments or donor projects aimed at road infrastructure related speed management.
I would like to express my gratitude to the National Automobile Club of Azerbaijan and project partners for choosing our school for a pop-up street transformation and implementing such an important initiative. Your project will have a big impact on the safety of our school children on these roads. We hope that such initiatives will not stop with this school and that your projects will continue to be implemented in the near future and impact on the lives of our children.
We must learn how to prioritise children on roads around schools. We are happy to have key global experts from the Global Designing Cities Initiative who have produced a Toolkit on exactly how to do this, and very capable local partners from AMAK and EASST who have helped to develop this project.
%
A month after the transformation a 33% reduction in top vehicle speeds were recorded.
%
17% fewer vehicles exceeding the speed limit were recorded.
Project news
Pop-up street transformation is installed to improve children’s road safety in Sumgayit City
Funded by the UK Aid through the World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility, the transformation aims to demonstrate how child-friendly road design can improve safety around schools.
Designing streets for slower speeds: the transformation of School #2 in Sumgayit City and what we can learn
The school street transformation in Azerbaijan has reduced congestion and slowed traffic considerably.
The transformation has been implemented by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), EASST, and the Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI) along with our local partners the National Automobile Club of Azerbaijan (AMAK).
It was funded by UK Aid through the World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility.
