Streets for Life
Low speed streets are the heart of any community, and contribute to making cities safe and healthy, green and liveable. 30 km/h zones in cities can also facilitate the attainment of a number of Sustainable Development Goals.
This includes not only goals for healthy and sustainable cities, but also goals for education, work, infrastructure, climate action and partnerships. As disadvantaged and minority communities are most exposed to high-speed traffic, and the road danger, environmental hazards and social exclusion it causes, 30 km/h zones also contribute to reducing inequalities, another of the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals. As did the Stockholm Declaration, the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030, prominently features speed management as a key intervention.
‘Streets for Life’ begun as the campaign for the Sixth United Nations Global Road Safety Week (UNGRSW) in 2021, has a specific focus on adopting 30km/h speeds as an urban default to deliver safe, equitable, healthy, and green public space. The aim of the campaign is to frame low-speed interventions as lifesaving, universal, low-cost and achievable measures to reduce road death and injury. Rather than dealing in generalities, the campaign focuses in on a specific objective: 30km/h where people live, walk and play.
The campaign is organised under the auspices of the UN Road Safety Collaboration and coordinated as a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO), Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety (the Alliance), FIA Foundation, and YOURS – Youth for Road Safety. It focuses on collaborative, smart and measurable advocacy towards the specific policy objective of low-speed streets. The campaign is implemented through group and individual outreach, mobilising road safety donors, UN agencies, NGOs and Youth, communities and legislators for a connected, global campaign with local, regional and national impact. It targets policy makers at national and local levels to implement this clear, direct intervention within their jurisdiction. The campaign strategy also focuses on promoting road safety to a broader set of stakeholders outside of the core road safety community, by highlighting that low-speed streets unlock multiple benefits for the environment, equity and health. The strategy focuses on coalition building at every level to create a broad base of support to achieve these shared goals.
Signatories of the Call to Action include: Dr Tedros, Director General of WHO; Henrietta Fore, former Executive Director, UNICEF; Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme; Jean Todt, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety; Tomas Eneroth, Minister for Infrastructure, Sweden; Jayathma Wickramanayake, UN Secretary General's Envoy on Youth; Ángela María Orozco Gómez, Minister of Transport, Colombia; James Wainaina Macharia, Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Kenya; Lord Robertson, Chairman, FIA Foundation; and Zoleka Mandela, Global Ambassador, Child Health Initiative.
The longer-term objective of the campaign is to crystalise commitments and support for low-speed streets in advance of the UN High Level Meeting on Road Safety due to take place in July 2022, as a practical and specific measure proven to save lives, in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target to halve global road deaths by 2030.
Learn more about the Streets for Life campaign.
