In April 2025, we completed the second phase of our regional Safe School Zones project, supported by the FIA Foundation Advocacy Hub, with expansive results that have seen safer routes to school for more than half a million children.
This includes speed limit reductions at more than 700 schools; an estimated investment of more than $2.3 million by local authorities; national and municipal policy change in two countries, and commitments to explore policy change from decision makers in others.
How we got here
Since the launch of the project in 2021, we have worked consistently with our local NGO partners across seven countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, and Tajikistan) to advocate for 30km/h speed limits around school zones.
In 2023, during the last UN Global Road Safety Week, we published a Situation Report celebrating the successes of the first two years of the project while also highlighting a complex and challenging picture across the seven countries. The report emphasised a range of challenges around legislation, stakeholder knowledge and awareness, data, infrastructure, enforcement, and community engagement that still needed to be addressed. Indeed, the average speed limit around schools in our region is 40km/h, and even this is frequently exceeded due to low levels of enforcement, high tolerance limits for speeding, and a lack of speed management infrastructure.
Through mentored grants, capacity building and knowledge sharing, we have worked with our partners to raise awareness on a range of interrelated issues. This has included campaigning for better enforcement, safer streets, cleaner air, an improved environment for walking and cycling, and improved infrastructure around schools. Across the region, our partners have been working with traffic police to identify high-risk schools in their cities and use global tools such as Star Ratings for Schools and the GDCI Designing Streets for Kids Guide to assess and advocate for improvements, including lower speeds.
Exponential success: 2023-2025
Over the past two years, our partners have collectively organised 18 high level roundtable meetings and attended over 100 meetings with decision makers, advocating for 30km/h policy change. Government officials in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova have all made commitments to supporting 30km/h school zone policies. In Georgia and Moldova, 30km/h school zones have been included in their national road safety plans, and both countries are in the process of rolling out new school zone road safety standards at municipal levels. In Kyrgyzstan, a proposal has been submitted to the government to change road safety legislation to include 30km/h school zones as an official directive.
These achievements have been testament to the good reputation, expertise and knowledge of our partners in each country. They have worked directly with over 500 police inspectors, engineers, school leaders, and local authority employees to build their capacity and awareness on implementing and enforcing 30km/h school zone policies. In particular, our partners have worked directly with the Traffic Police in each country to facilitate more than 50 extensive safety assessments around schools (many using SR4S) and jointly installed infrastructure upgrades at 37 schools as part of their wider advocacy efforts and to demonstrate the impact of best practice interventions.
Community support and readiness is also essential to delivering successful policy change. Public engagement and media awareness have therefore formed a core component of our partners’ projects. In total, our partners have organised more than 70 community events and participated in 104 media appearances over the last two years to promote the importance of Safe School Zones and 30km/h speed limits.
Next steps
The project will continue through 2025 and into early 2026. This third phase aims to build on the successes of the past four years and capitalise on the unique opportunities that this year presents to drive forward policy and implementation of 30km/h school zones across the seven countries. We are working with each partner to develop an individual action plan for their country targeting key areas for intervention. Each action plan is unique addressing the specific context of the country but all include interventions aimed at having the greatest impact, following up on commitments from the Fourth Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety held in February 2025.
The Automobile Club of Moldova is proud to be part of this important regional effort, supporting the shift towards safer, people-friendly school zones and helping drive real change for children and communities.
