Safe School Precincts Encouraging Active Mobility Among School Children

Volume I – Status Quo Report and Outcome Strategy for Coimbatore, India

The report has been prepared as part of the bilateral technical cooperation project ‘Integrated Sustainable Urban Transport Systems for Smart Cities (SMART-SUT)’ commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and jointly implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India. The objective of the project is to improve the planning and implementation of sustainable urban transport systems in selected Indian cities. The project also supports the Green Urban Mobility Partnership (GUMP) between the governments of India and Germany.
Providing safe access to all has been an integral feature of the mobility projects taken up by Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) and Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL). To strengthen its objective, a Non-Motorised Transport (NMT) Network Plan was prepared which elaborated the need for prioritising various vulnerable road users including schoolchildren.

The ‘Safe School Precincts’ study aims at providing a safe commuting ecosystem for schoolchildren. It highlights the issues related to accessibility around schools by analysing travel pattern of schoolchildren and identifying infrastructure gaps through an evidence-based rating mechanism. As a way forward, it recommends a collaborative approach to achieve the target of safe access to schools.
The study is presented in three volumes:

• Volume I – Status Quo Report and Outcome Strategy for Coimbatore, India, presents the status quo analysis and outcome strategy that covers needs assessment, results from the travel pattern survey, infrastructure gap assessment through iRAP star rating for schools and a strategy for the way forward.
• Volume II – Results from the Star Rating Analysis of Schools in Coimbatore, India presents the detailed results from iRAP star rating for schools to assess the infrastructure gaps around 25 schools with 69 locations in Coimbatore.
• Volume III – Guidance Document for Designing Travel Pattern Survey of School children presents a step-by-step process for conducting a travel pattern survey of schoolchildren. The survey sheets are divided into three categories to carefully capture the quantitative and qualitative responses from children, parents and school administrators. This document will serve as a ready-to-use guide for engineers, NGOs and academicians while carrying out these surveys.

Download Volume I