Youth Coalition member leads road audit project in Nepal

To kick off his Local Actions project, Hemant Tiwari and his team led an interactive workshop about the roads in Surkhet, Nepal for engineering students. The workshop covered topics around the Project “Safe Roads in Surkhet, Nepal” which looks to improve the road infrastructure in the city through road safety audits.

The workshop, supported by the Safe and Sustainable Nepal Organization and the Traffic and Transport Unlimited Solution, aimed to explain the road safety audit project to young civil engineers who joined the initiative. Hemant, the Local Actions lead, delivered sessions talking more about the auditing project. He highlighted the current status of road safety in Nepal and Surkhet and further emphasized the impact and significance of the project. 

He also talked about the road safety audit guidelines the engineers needed to follow and also went into length about the role of youth in road safety.

In the early stages of the project, the engineering students were trained on road safety audits. They were given the guidelines to design safe road infrastructure that would provide the most efficient ways to avoid casualties on the road and promote safer travel. 

Hemant and his team held that it was essential for students to understand road safety audits and are able to examine the safety elements of the road. The students were also trained to identify what interventions were required at different road sections which depended on their types and location. 

The youth participants were also encouraged to actively take part in road safety with consideration to their engineering background. They were made more aware of prioritizing the road users’ needs through the design of the road infrastructure. 

Later in the implementation of the project, Hemant and his team arranged meetings with decision-makers from the Traffic Police Department and other authorities concerned with setting up speed limits of 30 km/h in the city. 

Hemant and his team were able to get the commitments of three main stakeholders to set up speed limits of 30 km/h in Nepal, Surkhet. They were able to get the commitments of the Ward Office and Representative of the Ward, the Birendranagar Municipality Office, and the Provincial and District Traffic Office