Colorful, Safe and Child-Friendly
Following over a year of preparation and implementation work, the first “children’s zebra crossing” planned by elementary school children has been opened in the Sindorf neighborhood of the German town of Kerpen. Designed by the children themselves, the main aim of the crossing is to make it safer for many children to get to their school – the largest elementary school in Kerpen. The reason for working with the schoolchildren was a realization on the part of town planners that children are most likely to accept and use crossing systems such as crosswalks when they are involved in the planning work themselves. But the children’s involvement didn’t stop with the planning – they were also on site for all the important phases of the construction, and even painted a roundabout next to the zebra crossing and the area around it themselves. An evaluation process conducted in parallel to the project showed that the addition of the children’s elements to the traffic hub has had a lasting effect in reducing the speed of motorized traffic in the area.