Safer City Streets Network

24 October 2016

Safer City Streets is the global traffic safety network for liveable cities. Safer city Streets helps cities to improve their urban road safety performance by sharing data, experiences and knowledge – by learning from each other.

Every minute, a person dies in city traffic. Millions are killed or injured every year causing great human suffering and costing around 3% of GDP. Crashes also nurture a feeling of insecurity. Among people killed on city streets, 8 out of 10 are pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users. Where streets are seen as dangerous, efforts to promote walking and cycling are undermined. Reducing the risks of urban traffic thus not only saves lives. Safer streets encourage sustainable forms of transport and help a city reduce pollution, cut emissions, fight congestion and have healthier citizens – in short, to make a city more liveable.

Currently, 17 cities are taking part in Safer City Streets network is managed by the International Transport Forum (ITF), which collects and analyses relevant data from cities in a dedicated database.

Safer City Streets builds on a 2013 pilot project established by the IRTAD Road Traffic Analysis and Data Group, hosted by the International Transport Forum (ITF). The pilot worked with nine cities from Europe and North America that shared data on crashes, population, mobility and traffic. The success of the pilot gave birth to the idea of a worldwide network. Safer City Streets is being developed by the ITF and modeled on the IRTAD global road safety network of countries that has run successfully for more than 25 years. The IRTAD group will provide advice and support to Safer City Streets.