Led by: Odense, Parks and Roads Administration
Contact: Troels Andersen
Tel. +45 66 14 88 14 ext 2751
email ta@odense.dk
Introduction
The evaluation of 20+ years of work on safe routes to school in Odense to enable implementation of equivalent safety measures on all school routes. The project includes:
1. Calculation of economic gains achieved by measures and co-operation including benefits to society.
2. Proposals for strategic improvement of routes.
3. Production of a handbook on findings and measures for dissemination.
ACTIVITY UPDATES:-
Survey on children's insecurity in traffic, September 2004
Odense has an annual budget for creating more safe routes for school children. The budget is small and to maximize the benefits from this, the projects are prioritised both by traffic accidents and rating the sites children find most unsafe. To get this information Odense has conducted a survey with all school children around 9, 12 and 15 years. By using the internet and a special GIS system the children themselves have pointed out the unsafe roads and crossings. 4359 children from 50 schools participated, and the children pointed out 0.8 danger spots each.
http://www.nyvig.dk/odense http://www.nyvig.dk/odense_uk
80% of all children cycle or walk to school. This percentage has been stable for 25 years, although this is not the case on a national level. An adult accompanied 23% of the children in 3rd grade walking or cycling to school. The use of cycle helmets was also benchmarked as part of the survey
The childrens reasons for feeling unsafe at certain sites were: 'there are too many cars'; 'the cars are driving too fast' or 'cars don't give way'.
The survey will be updated every four years. This initial survey cost as low as 5,000 euros. In the last two decades the number of injured school children in Odense has decresed by 30-40%.
Newspaper reports, Dec 2003
The national newspaper Politiken has published statistics based on the 'Safe routes to school evaluation summary' produced by Odense, reporting that speed humps reduce child related injuries by 75%. The Traffic Minister Flemming Hansen recommended that other cities should follow this example.
Safe routes to school evaluation summary, March 2003
The report - view document evaluates 83 projects carried out in the Municipality of Odense between 1986 -1999. Amongst other findings it recommends the use of speed reduction and certain types of signalling as having the greatest benefit to road safety.
The Target 2 workpackage will build upon these recommendations throughout the next three years. Based on the report, priority projects will focus on insecurity, accidents, free transport where road are dangerous, school start campaigns and cycle campaigns for children. See related links section for a full summary.
