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.
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The Governor of Antalya, Ahmet Altiparmak
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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
