Lifelong Learning To Achieve Pedestrian Priority and Safety EU Project started in Antalya

Walking is definitely the most environmentally friendly and democratic way to get anywhere. No equipment is needed and it is open to everybody. However, pedestrians are threatened and coralled into smaller and smaller spaces in our urban areas. 

The City of Antalya as a centre of tourism, cultural activities, yearly receives about 10.5 million people increases its population density many times. Moreover, it is Turkey's biggest international sea resort. That makes Antalya in the top 10 most visited cities in the world, and the third after New York and Paris in 2012. The dominance of motorized transportation, however, excess traffic affect the quality of public spaces, making critical the infrastructure capacity for mobility, causing extremely slow intra-urban displacements. Short journeys are also affected by the lack of safe routes for cycling and reduced opportunities for adequate and comfortable walking.

As Turkey’s most modern city, in Antalya, pedestrians priority programme is lunched by the Governorship of Antalya in 2011. Within this context, a project was prepared by CEUPA for European Union Life Long Learning Programme and it was funded by European Commision by the coordination of Turkish National Agency in Minisitry of EU Affairs in 2011.

The objective of the Life Long Learning to Achieve Pedestrian Priority and Safety in Antalya (APPSA). Project is to implement the EU standards for pedestrian priority in big cities, showing the applicability of these standards in pilot areas by dissemination activities. Being a Transfer of Innovation and Vocational Training project to be partnered with 5 local and 3 European organisations, it aims to provide pedestrian safety by creating a learning model that will teach the traffic culture to pedestrians and pedestrian culture to drivers through vocational trainings.

The scope of APPSA will not be limited with the outputs of similar earlier projects, additional innovative instruments will be developed which will increase the number of beneficiaries and expand the impact area by involvement of the public. As the Project Consortium will be composed of the key staff from the local authorities, Governorship of Antalya, Metropolitan Municipality, Directorate of Security, Directorate of National Education, Driving Schools Assc., there will be strong emphasize to implement the proposal through traffic regulations. With the vocational education the participants’ market value in labor market will increase. The outputs and the model developed will further be shared with 80 provinces of TR and all across EU.

Thanks to this Project, when tourists come to Antalya, they can walk on the streets in peace.

The Governor of Antalya, Ahmet Altiparmak

The Governor of Antalya, Ahmet Altiparmak pays attention to and supports this project. The project will last for two years. Three pilot zones in Akdeniz University Campus, Old City (Kaleiçi), and Konyaalti Street Training and Educational activities by MEM and Driviers Schools  have started. The Coordinator of Center for EU Projects of Governorship of Antalya (CEUPA), Baki Karacay and Project Specialist at CEUPA, Meryem Zincirli are doing a very great contribution to the Project.

 

As the best and the most followed blog of Antalya, Antalya City Blog supports Lifelong Learning To Achieve Pedestrian Priority and Safety Project of Antalya.

 

You can also support this Project on Twitter: @onceyaya or @CEUPA_ANTALYA

 

For more information, please visit: www.ceupa.gov.tr and http://www.onceyaya.info