ABOUT THE COMPETITION
The Inter-institutional competition, invites the youths of technical institutions in Jorhat to come up with scalable, low-cost solutions and sustainable design concepts to improve the quality of infrastructure for the road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users including Children and Youth of the Jorhat city.
All the concept notes including the road designs will be screened by a panel of jury comprising of Road Safety Experts from various reputed institutions of India such as World Resources Institute (WRI) and Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG). The top shortlisted proposals will be invited to present their concepts and designs in front of an expert panel in a workshop at a reputed Institution of Jorhat. Any feasible concepts from the selected designs may be implemented on ground as a tactical urbanism during the workshop. Travel and food arrangements for the presenters will be made by the organizers.
About the implementing Partner Agency- Indian Institute of Technology- Guwahati
IIT Guwahati, a premier Technical Higher Education institution in India has been continuously doing credible research in the areas of transportation focusing of geometric design, road safety, and road crash analysis etc. IIT Guwahati is a Technical Partner for the SRSC project in Jorhat city.
About the Project Area
Jorhat is a mid-size city in Assam, India with a population of about 2.5 lakhs. It is the current administrative headquarter of Jorhat district. The national Highway-37 and a railway track runs through the city. Gar Ali, Na Ali and K.B. road are the main arterial roads. Numerous sub arterial, collector and local roads network the city. Being the administrative and business capital of the district, roads in the city are always busy.
As the project focusses on area to be covered under Municipality area, a total of 54 schools were surveyed which are located inside the Municipal area with a total enrolment of 11178 nos. Out of those schools, it was analysed that 44% of children commute to school by walking, 16% commute by bicycle, 14% commute by two-wheeler, 10 % by three-wheelers 7% commute in the Vans, 5% commute by Rickshaws, 3% commute by private vehicles and 1% by others means. Based on the data 74% students are vulnerable road users. (Data are based on the 54 schools surveyed under Municipality area)
Need of the Hour in the city
Jorhat city apart from other cities being small in size as per Sqkm area have a good governance in the road safety aspects. The roads are widened, road infrastructures for a safe school zone can be seen in front of some of the schools, zebra crossings in the junctions, traffic management in non-signalised junctions etc could be seen. However, to make the city more sustainable in terms of mobility, walkability and cyclability as major portion of citizens in Jorhat could be seen as pedestrians and bicyclists (no doubt motor vehicle users are also increasing day by day), but the risk of those vulnerable road users is always there.
Moreover, Jorhat is an educational hub, lot of youth come from all corners of the State to get the value education from the reputed institutes of the city. Therefore, SRSC would like to provide an opportunity to the youth of those institutions to look the City into the Sustainable angle in terms of safe mobility and cyclability.
Recognition to the Participants:
Timeline
Rules:
Criteria for Judging
BACKGROUND
Children’s travel pattern to school has long been a subject of research in the western countries. However, the studies and understanding on this subject is very much limited in developing countries such as India. Adults make their own travel decisions and thus, travel patterns of adults and school going children are very much different from each other. Most teenagers take decisions regarding their school travel on their own, school trip decisions of younger children are entirely decided by their parents. Thus, students should be considered as major stakeholders in transportation as well as road safety policy recommendations. The increased urbanization, increasing number of traffic, unskilled or semiskilled drivers, ignorance and intentional violation of traffic rules, lack of proper lane discipline and the woefully inadequate road infrastructure system make Indian roads very much hazardous. Most of the lower-middle income group people in India primarily dependent on motorized two-wheelers for everyday commute. Thus, two wheelers, motorized as well as non-motorized vehicles are the primary components of Indian traffic and consequently pedestrians, two-wheeler users, and bicyclists are considered as the most vulnerable road users. All these elements contribute to high road traffic injuries among adolescents.
Safer Roads for Safer Childhood (SRSC) is a project being implemented in Jorhat city of Assam, India since June 2018 to enhance the road safety scenario for children, especially focussing on 6 pilot schools which were selected based on a situational assessment of all schools of Jorhat under municipality. The project is being implemented by a consortium of Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) and Department of Home and Political Affairs, Govt. of Assam (through Jorhat Police). The project is guided by Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) and funded by Fondation Botnar.
About Botnar Child Road Safety Challenge
The Botnar Child Road Safety Challenge is a project of the Fondation Botnar, a philanthropic foundation in Switzerland. The Challenge is designed to address locally relevant road safety problems that affect children in small and mid-sized cities in seven priority countries with practical, innovative and evidence-based interventions. The Challenge is managed by the Global Road Safety Partnership.
Global Road Safety Partnership
The Global Road Safety Partnership is a hosted program of the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies and based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its mission is the sustainable reduction of road-crash death and injury in low- and middle-income countries GRSP does this by creating and supporting multisector road safety partnerships that are engaged with front-line good practice road safety interventions in countries and communities throughout the world.
About the implementing Organization- Centre for Environment Education
CEE was established by the then Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt of India in 1984 as a Centre of Excellence. CEE is a key constituent of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Network, India (SUMNet India) and was one of the lead agencies in developing the Pune Cycle Plan. CEE has recently completed one Walkability Study of Major Roads of Guwahati with support from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and currently implementing another walkability project with SUMNet India. CEE has been working closely with the schools in Assam for about two decades. CEE-UNICEF-Axom SSA Mission school programme Daily Handwashing for an Ailment-free Life (DHaAL) bagged the National Social Innovation Award of NITI AayogMEA in 2016. CEE is the lead partner for the SRSC project being implemented in Jorhat city.
CONTACT
Email IDs – [email protected], [email protected] , [email protected] Phone no – 0361 – 2667382
Bijaylakshmi Borpuzari
Programme Coordinator,
CEE Northeast, 8133911474
Afrin Sultana
Project Engineer,
CEE Northeast, 7002774275
Website: www.ceeindia.org
ABOUT THE ORGANISER
CEE North East The CEE North-East Regional office was initiated in 1993. The regional office looks at the activities in states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. Readmore...
Established as a Centre of Excellence of the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India.
