T-TRIID Final Report – Metamorphosis Global

It is the contention of Metamorphosis that the “built environment” can be improved if it is designed with the most vulnerable road users in mind, namely children. This contention is being examined for High Income Countries in the Metamorphosis EU Project in which the University of Southampton (UoS) is a partner. In Metamorphosis Global, the transferability of the concept to Low Income Countries is being examined. This is done through a case study of Bangladesh and a collaboration with Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

The starting point was a review of interventions related to child-friendly neighbourhoods. This revealed a huge volume of material, particularly focused on High Income Countries. A purposive sample of seven global interventions or groups of interventions was assessed by UoS with respect to four criteria: implementation effort, cost, applicability and empowerment. The best performing interventions seemed to involve road closures and/or some kind of reallocation of road space to cycling, walking or more general recreational activities. Empirical evidence on the impacts of the schemes is generally limited, but there is some evidence of reduced traffic speeds and accidents, which are accompanied by increases in quality of life indicators.

In the development of interventions for Bangladesh, an emphasis was placed on developing local solutions to local problems. In Bangladesh, the number of road traffic fatalities per onroad motor vehicle was over 35 times that of the UK, while the percentage of road traffic fatalities that were children was more than five times higher in Bangladesh than a sample of other countries. As a result, child road safety is a greater issue in Bangladesh than in the UK, and some high-profile incidents have led to this issue being politicised. As result, the Bangladesh case study was focused around two schools: the BUET School in Dhaka, the capital, and Abdul Khalique High (AKH) in Jagannathpur in North East Bangladesh. In total, these schools have over 2,000 students. Given this contextual background, the seven local interventions drawn-up by BUET had a greater focus on educational initiatives with respect to road safety. Furthermore, road closure schemes were believed to be problematic due to organisational difficulties related to implementation. As a result, a wall painting scheme with an emphasis on road safety signage was believed to be the most appropriate intervention and an eight-week implementation plan has been drawn up.

Final Project Report Page 4 of 46 Extensive surveys were undertaken at AKH and BUET Schools through preliminary and final workshops involving over 500 participants. These indicated that, in addition to wall painting, there was student support for tree planting, cycling and street closure schemes. A common feature at both schools was the supressed demand for travel to/from school by bicycle, a feature than can also be found in High Income Countries. In part, this may be because the support for cycling schemes was less strong amongst parents/guardians.

The findings from Metamorphosis Global have been used to develop an online prototype toolkit that has been made available in both English and Bengali. This includes an ‘Inspiration and Ideas’ section, which details the global and local measures that have been reviewed. It also has an ‘Implementation’ section with a focus on end-user scheme development and testing through workshops with children, parents/guardians and road users. The online tool itself has been tested with end users, both internally at UoS and BUET, as well as at AKH School.

In future work, it is hoped to extend the functionality of the online toolkit and include more measures, both for Bangladesh and for other Low Income Countries. This would also include impact evaluations, in addition to the process evaluations that have already been undertaken. The development of appropriate video content is also planned.