Crossing the Street Should Not Be an Act of Courage
Rethinking Pedestrian Safety in Latin America
Valeria Carrion Moreno
IRF Young Professional Programme Leader | Transport, Urban Mobility and Road Safety Specialist, Peru
I am a transport, urban mobility and road safety specialist from Peru, working across transport policy, traffic management, transport impact assessment, tactical urbanism and safer street design. Through my role in MOVISS, a civil society organisation promoting sustainable mobility and road safety, I have seen how pedestrian safety depends not only on preventing crashes, but on whether streets allow people to move with autonomy, dignity and protection from the first step of their journey.
Introduction
In many Latin American cities, the most revealing part of the transport system is not the highway interchange, the new bus corridor or the metro station. It is the crossing. That is where policy becomes real, where speed, design, enforcement and accessibility either protect pedestrians or leave them to negotiate their own safety. It is where an older adult may run out of signal time, where a driver may or may not yield, and where a wheelchair user may be forced onto the roadway because the sidewalk disappears.
Safer streets are shaped not only by rules, but by enforcement, design and everyday expectations. I felt this clearly last year while visiting Tacna in Peru and Arica in Chile, two neighbouring border cities where the pedestrian experience felt different. In one, crossing required caution and negotiation. In the other, drivers stopped almost as soon as a pedestrian entered the crossing. It was not formal evidence, but it was a powerful reminder that the same act, crossing the street, can feel entirely different depending on how a city chooses to protect people.
The Gap Is Not Knowledge. It Is Implementation.
Latin America does not lack road safety language. Across the region, transport plans increasingly refer to sustainable mobility, vulnerable road users, Vision Zero, school zones, accessibility, traffic calming and the Safe System approach. The problem is not that the sector has failed to learn the vocabulary. The problem is that the vocabulary has not consistently changed the street.
This is especially visible in pedestrian safety. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.19 million people die on the world’s roads every year, with more than half of fatalities occurring among pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where nine in ten road deaths occur (World Health Organization, 2023a). In the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization reports that deaths among motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists rose from 39 percent to 47 percent of total road fatalities between 2009 and 2021. Pedestrians alone represented 17 percent of road deaths in the region in 2021 (Pan American Health Organization, 2025).
An earlier regional benchmarking study reached a similar conclusion. In a ten-country study of Latin America, the International Transport Forum found that pedestrians were the largest or second largest group of road deaths in seven countries, and recommended giving priority to pedestrian facilities, speed management and safer access to public transport (International Transport Forum, 2017).
Pedestrian deaths and injuries are still too often treated as the result of exposure, informality or individual risk taking. But exposure does not explain everything. Research from Lima, one of Latin America’s largest urban areas, illustrates how these risks are produced at street level. It has shown that the walking environment is associated with pedestrian and motor vehicle collisions, and that the presence of a bus stop was associated with a threefold increase in the risk of a pedestrian collision (Quistberg et al., 2015a; Quistberg et al., 2015b).
These findings matter because they show that risk is not only carried by the person walking. It is also produced by where cities place crossings, sidewalks, stops, lanes and waiting spaces.
People cross where their purposes and destinations require them to cross, not only where the city has made crossing safe. They walk where the sidewalk exists, or where it disappears. They wait where the bus stops, not necessarily where the crossing is safe. They adapt to roads designed to move vehicles faster than bodies can safely tolerate.
That is why the pedestrian safety challenge in Latin America is not mainly a technical knowledge gap. It is a delivery gap. We know the principles. We know the countermeasures. We know the consequences of inaction. What remains unresolved is whether cities are willing to make pedestrian safety measurable, funded, enforceable and politically non-negotiable.
What Cities Choose to Build and What They Still Need to Prove
The implementation gap is also visible in what cities choose to build, measure and enforce. Regional reviews show that Latin America is not starting from zero. Countries and cities have developed road safety agencies, observatories, infrastructure assessment tools, school zone interventions, speed management measures and safer street pilots. But they also show a persistent problem. Progress is fragmented, and instruments do not always translate into safer crossings, slower streets, continuous sidewalks or protected access to public transport (Pinto et al., 2023; International Transport Forum, 2017) .
At different levels of government, Peru, Mexico and Chile have adopted or promoted lower urban speed limits, safer school environments, traffic calming guidance and enforcement tools (Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión, 2023; Comisión Nacional de Seguridad de Tránsito & Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo de Chile, 2025; Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones del Perú, 2024a, 2024b).
At the city level, initiatives such as Bogotá’s long-term pedestrian policy, Mexico City’s Pasos Seguros and Fotocívicas, Quito’s school zone markings and raised crossings, and Fortaleza’s low-speed areas show that the region has begun to move from policy language toward physical intervention (Global Designing Cities Initiative, 2019; Institute for Transportation and Development Policy México, 2022; Municipio del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito, 2023; Secretaría de Movilidad de la Ciudad de México, 2021; Bogotá Mayor’s Office, 2023).
These examples should be recognised, but not romanticised. They show that Latin America already has tools, policies and local experiments in motion. They also reveal the next challenge. The region now needs to prove whether these interventions are changing the street in ways that matter for pedestrians, including lower operating speeds, safer crossings, continuous and accessible sidewalks, protected school environments and fewer serious injuries and deaths.
This is especially important for speed management. International evidence shows that lower urban speeds can produce significant road safety benefits, particularly where people and vehicles mix (World Health Organization, 2023b; Yannis & Michelaraki, 2025). But lower limits do not become real only because they are written into law. Recent research using large-scale street and speed data found that the mere introduction of lower speed limits is not sufficient to reduce driving speeds effectively when street design does not support compliance (Orsi et al., 2025).
The gap between the rule and the street is where pedestrian safety is won or lost.
The Lima evidence mentioned earlier illustrates one part of a wider regional problem. Across Latin America, national reforms may align with international recommendations, while local investment does not always show whether streets are being redesigned around people. In some cities, projects focused on vehicle flow and road capacity still receive greater political visibility than pedestrian safety, accessibility and safer access to public transport. When this happens, reforms remain incomplete.
The Questions Worth Asking Now
Pedestrian safety should not depend on isolated pilots, temporary urbanism or the political visibility of a single school zone. Pilots matter, but they are not enough. A raised crossing should not be exceptional near a school. A refuge island should not be considered a design luxury on a wide avenue. Safe access to bus stops should not depend on a special project. Universal accessibility should not be added after the road is built. These should be standards, budget lines and audit requirements.
A people-centred safety agenda should start from the opposite premise. Streets should not require assistance as a condition for mobility. Crossings, signals, tactile paving, ramps, refuge islands and walking times should be designed so that autonomy is protected by the environment, not delegated to whoever happens to be nearby.
The next step is to move from counting deaths to reading risk. Crash data will always matter, but waiting for deaths to accumulate before intervening is incompatible with a preventive approach. Conflict analysis, speed studies, pedestrian counts, accessibility audits, near-miss observation, school zone risk mapping and public transport access assessments should be part of ordinary road safety management.
Are school zones physically designed for 30 km/h, or merely signed as such? Are public transport projects required to include safe pedestrian access audits? Are crossings designed for children, older adults, wheelchair users and caregivers? Are governments willing to redesign streets even when it means reducing vehicle speed or vehicle space?
These are not rhetorical questions. They determine whether Latin America’s next decade of transport policy will protect people from the first step of their journey.
The timing matters. We are entering the home stretch of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030, while the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport 2026–2035 is just beginning (World Health Organization, 2021; United Nations, 2023). Latin America does not need another decade of plans that sound safe on paper but fail at the crossing. It needs streets where safety is visible, measurable and built into the first step of every trip.
The question is no longer whether the region knows what to do. The question is whether we are willing to build it now.
Because crossing the street should not be an act of courage.
References
Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. (2023). Ley General de Movilidad y Seguridad Vial. Diario Oficial de la Federación. https://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LGMSV.pdf
Comisión Nacional de Seguridad de Tránsito & Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo de Chile. (2025). Guía para la implementación de Zonas de Tránsito Calmado. Gobierno de Chile.https://www.minvu.gob.cl/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Guia-ZTC_nov_2025.pdf
Global Designing Cities Initiative. (2019, December 10). Reclaiming space for pedestrians in downtown Fortaleza. https://globaldesigningcities.org/update/metrics-matter/
Institute for Transportation and Development Policy México. (2022). Expansión y fortalecimiento del programa Fotocívicas en CDMX. https://mexico.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/1.-Expansion-y-fortalecimiento-del-programa-Fotocivicas-en-CDMX-Policy-Brief.pdf
International Transport Forum. (2017). Benchmarking road safety in Latin America, Case-specific policy analysis. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/benchmarking-road-safety-in-latin-america_530f11da-en.html
Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones del Perú. (2024a, January 14). Nuevos límites de velocidad en zonas urbanas a nivel nacional. Plataforma del Estado Peruano. https://www.gob.pe/26617-nuevos-limites-de-velocidad-en-zonas-urbanas-a-nivel-nacional
Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones del Perú. (2024b). Entornos Escolares Seguros, un compromiso con la seguridad vial. Plataforma del Estado Peruano.https://www.gob.pe/institucion/mtc/campa%C3%B1as/48229-entornos-escolares-seguros-un-compromiso-con-la-seguridad-vial
Municipio del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito. (2023, December 20). Proyectos ejecutados por el Municipio mejoran la seguridad vial. Quito Informa. https://www.quitoinforma.gob.ec/2023/12/20/proyectos-ejecutados-por-el-municipio-mejoran-la-seguridad-vial/
Orsi, G., Venverloo, T., La Grotteria, A., Fugiglando, U., Duarte, F., Santi, P., & Ratti, C. (2025). Street design and driving behavior, Evidence from a large-scale study in Milan, Amsterdam, and Dubai. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04434
Pan American Health Organization. (2025, January 22). New PAHO report on road safety highlights slow and uneven progress in reducing traffic deaths in the Americas. https://www.paho.org/en/news/22-1-2025-new-paho-report-road-safety-highlights-slow-and-uneven-progress-reducing-traffic
Pinto, A. M., Díaz, C., Zamora, E., Café, E., Ponce de León, M., Sosa, M., & Cortés, R. (Eds.). (2023). Seguridad vial en América Latina y el Caribe, Tras un decenio de acción y perspectivas para una movilidad más segura. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. https://publications.iadb.org/en/road-safety-latin-america-and-caribbean-after-decade-action-prospects-safer-mobility
Quistberg, D. A., Koepsell, T. D., Boyle, L. N., Miranda, J. J., Johnston, B. D., & Ebel, B. E. (2015a). The walking environment in Lima, Peru and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions, An exploratory analysis. Traffic Injury Prevention, 16(3), 314–321. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/214575
Quistberg, D. A., Koepsell, T. D., Johnston, B. D., Boyle, L. N., Miranda, J. J., & Ebel, B. E. (2015b). Bus stops and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions in Lima, Peru, A matched case-control study. Injury Prevention, 21(e1), e15–e22. https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2013-041023
Secretaría de Movilidad de la Ciudad de México. (2021). Programa Integral de Seguridad Vial de la Ciudad de México 2021–2024. https://www.semovi.cdmx.gob.mx/storage/app/media/PISVI-2021-2024_.pdf
Bogotá Mayor’s Office. (2023). Distrito presenta Política Pública del Peatón, por una ciudad caminable y segura https://bogota.gov.co/mi-ciudad/movilidad/presentada-la-politica-publica-del-peaton-por-una-ciudad-caminable
United Nations. (2023). United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport 2026–2035. https://sdgs.un.org/un-decade-sustainable-transport-2026-2035
World Health Organization. (2021). Global plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/global-plan-for-the-decade-of-action-for-road-safety-2021-2030
World Health Organization. (2023a). Global status report on road safety 2023. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240086517
World Health Organization. (2023b). Speed management, A road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners (2nd ed.). https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/speed-management--a-road-safety-manual-for-decision-makers-and-practitioners.-2nd-edition
Yannis, G., & Michelaraki, E. (2025). Effectiveness of 30 km/h speed limit, A literature review. Journal of Safety Research, 92, 490–503. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2024.11.003
The “Road Victims” We Don't Count
Rethinking Road Safety Through a Broader Public Health Approach
Steffel Ludivin Feudjio Tezong | IRF Young Professional Programme Leader
I am a transport specialist working across Africa and internationally, where I support governments, development partners and research centres in designing safer, healthier and more sustainable transport systems. This article reflects my belief that road safety should be viewed not only through the lens of crashes, but as a broader public health challenge.
Road safety has long been measured primarily by fatalities and serious injuries. Every year, around 1.19 million people lose their lives on the world's roads, making road traffic injuries the leading cause of death among young people aged 5–29 years [1]. These figures have rightly driven global action, from the Second Decade of Action for Road Safety to the Sustainable Development Goals [2,3]
Yet I believe we are still counting only part of the problem.
The more I work in transport, the more I wonder whether road safety has become too focused on crashes alone. A transport system can harm health long before, or without, a collision. Polluted air, traffic noise and environments that discourage walking and cycling quietly contribute to chronic disease and premature death, yet they rarely feature in road safety discussions.
This is not an argument for paying less attention to crashes. It is an argument for broadening our ambition. If transport systems are designed to protect human life, then success should be measured not only by the crashes they prevent, but also by the healthier, cleaner and more active communities they create.
The Health Burden Usually Overlooked
The problem is not that we lack evidence. It is that we continue to view these health impacts in isolation. Physical inactivity is treated as a public health issue, air pollution as an environmental issue, and traffic noise as an urban nuisance. I would argue they are all, at least in part, road safety issues because they are shaped by the same transport systems.
Take physical inactivity. When streets feel unsafe or inconvenient for walking or cycling, people naturally rely more on motorised transport, even for short trips. The result is a more sedentary lifestyle, physical inactivity, that contributes to around 3.2 million deaths each year, including 2.6 million in low- and middle-income countries, and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases [4-6].
The same streets expose people to air pollution. Road transport is a major source of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, accounting for around 15% of direct global CO₂ emissions [7]. The consequences are measured not only in emissions, but also in hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year, with children among the most affected [8]. Notably 1 in 10 child asthma cases is linked to road traffic air pollution [9].
Then there is traffic noise, perhaps the most overlooked consequence of car-dependent mobility. More than 30% of the world's population is exposed to excessive road traffic noise, increasing the risk of sleep disturbance, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and poorer mental well-being [10]. In the EU, road traffic noise affects one in five people, contributing to 9,000 premature deaths and 36,000 new cases of ischaemic heart disease each year, alongside widespread annoyance and sleep disturbance [11].
We often accept this as the unavoidable cost of mobility. It isn't. It is the consequence of how we choose to design and manage our streets.
These problems may appear different, but they share the same origins: streets designed primarily for moving vehicles rather than protecting people. Once we recognise that, the conversation changes. Road safety is no longer just about preventing crashes; it becomes about designing transport systems that improve health, quality of life and environmental sustainability.
One Investment, Multiple Health Benefits
If these health burdens share common causes, they also share common solutions.
For too long, road safety, public health and climate action have been treated as separate conversations. I believe that is one of our biggest mistakes. Many of the interventions that make transport systems safer also make them healthier, cleaner and more inclusive.
Take speed management. We know that a 1% increase in average speed leads to approximately a 4% increase in fatal crashes [12]. Yet lower speeds do far more than save lives. They also reduce emissions and traffic noise. Studies from Belgium and Germany found that reducing speed limits can lower CO₂ and nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 25%, while research from Zurich showed significant reductions in road traffic noise after urban speed limits were reduced from 50 km/h to 30 km/h [13-15].
The same is true for walking, cycling and public transport. Safe infrastructure encourages people to leave their cars behind, reducing emissions while making physical activity part of everyday life [16-18].The health gains are substantial: active commuting reduces all-cause mortality by 9% and cardiovascular mortality by 15% [19]. The World Health Organization estimates in a study in Accra that investments in walking and cycling infrastructure could save 33,000 lives over 35 years and generate USD 15 billion in health benefits [20].
What strikes me is that we continue to justify these investments one benefit at a time. A cycle lane is treated as a cycling project. A lower speed limit is presented as a road safety measure. Public transport is viewed as a mobility service. In reality, each achieves all of these objectives at once.
Perhaps this is the shift road safety needs most. Instead of asking how transport policies can reduce crashes, we should ask how they can improve health. When viewed through that lens, sustainable mobility is no longer just a transport or climate objective, it becomes one of the most effective public health strategies available.
From Theory to Practice
This vision is already becoming reality. Cities around the world are showing that investments in sustainable mobility can improve safety, health and environmental quality at the same time.
Bogotá is one of the strongest examples. Investment in its CicloRutas network increased cycling while reducing bicycle-related deaths and injuries, lowering household transport costs and avoiding an estimated 36,600 tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year [21,22]. In Berlin, reallocating road space from motor vehicles to pedestrians and cyclists significantly reduced residents' exposure to harmful nighttime traffic noise [11].
These cities remind us of something important: the greatest returns come from interventions that solve several problems at once. Safer streets become cleaner streets. Lower speeds reduce both crashes and noise. Walking, cycling and public transport improve health while reducing emissions.
I believe this is where road safety must evolve. For decades, we have measured success by the crashes we prevent. That will always matter, but it is no longer enough. A transport system should also be judged by whether it encourages people to walk, breathe cleaner air, enjoy quieter neighbourhoods and move safely throughout their lives.
Looking beyond the crash does not weaken the road safety agenda; it strengthens it. It asks us to stop thinking only about surviving our journeys and start thinking about the kind of lives our transport systems make possible.
Perhaps the safest transport systems are not simply those that prevent crashes, but those that help people live longer, healthier and better lives.
References
[1] World Health Organization. (2023). Global status report on road safety 2023. https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/global-status-report-on-road-safety-2023
[2] UN. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). https://sdgs.un.org/goals
[3] WHO. UN decade of action for road safety 2021-2030. https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/safety-and-mobility/decade-of-action-for-road-safety-2021-2030
[4] An, R., Shen, J., Yang, Q., & Yang, Y. (2020). Impact of built environment on physical activity and obesity among children and adolescents in China : A narrative systematic review. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 8(2), 153–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2018.11.003
[5] Wang, H., Dai, X., Wu, J., Wu, X., & Nie, X. (2025). Influence of urban green open space on residents ’ physical activity in China. 2019, 1–12.https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-7416-7
[6] World Health Organization. (2019). Physical inactivity. https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/3416
[7] Hannah Ritchie. (2020) - “Cars, planes, trains: where do CO2 emissions from transport come from?” https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport
[8] Anne Gulland. (2018). Road traffic kills 350,000 children a year. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[9] Achakulwisut, P. et al. (2016). Global , national , and urban burdens of paediatric asthma incidence attributable to ambient NO₂ pollution : estimates from global datasets. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30046-4
[10] Chenzhi Cai, Cheuk Ming Mak, and Xuhui. (2019).Analysis of urban road traffic noise exposure of residential buildings in hong kong over the past decade. doi: 10.4103/nah.NAH_36_18.
[11] European Environment Agency. (2020). Environmental noise in Europe. https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/environmental-noise-in-europe
[12] The International Transport Forum. (2018). Speed and Crash Risk Speed and Crash Risk. https://www.itf-oecd.org/speed-crash-risk
[13] Coensel, B. De. (2011). Assessment of the impact of speed limit reduction and traffic signal coordination on vehicle emissions using an integrated approach. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2011.06.001
[14] Kunkler, J., Braun, M., & Kellner, F. (2021). Speed Limit Induced CO 2 Reduction on Motorways : Enhancing Discussion Transparency through Data Enrichment of Road Networks. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010395
[15] Brink, M., Mathieu, S., & Rüttener, S. (2022). Lowering urban speed limits to 30 km / h reduces noise annoyance and shifts exposure – response relationships : Evidence from a field study in Zurich. Environment International, 170(October), 107651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107651
[16] Victoria Transport Policy Institute (2013). Evaluating Active Transport Benefits and Costs: Guide to Valuing Walking and Cycling Improvements and Encouragement Programs. https://trid.trb.org/view/1262285
[17] International Society for Physical Activity and Health. (2020). Eight Investments That Work for Physical Activity. www.ISPAH.org/Resources
[18] Buehler, R., Kuhnimhof, T., Bauman, A., & Eisenmann, C. (2019). Active travel as stable source of physical activity for one third of German adults : Evidence from longitudinal data. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2018.09.022
[19] Dutheil, F., Pélangeon, S., Duclos, M., Vorilhon, P., & Mermillod, M. (2020). Protective Effect on Mortality of Active Commuting to Work : A Systematic Review and Meta ‑ analysis. Sports Medicine, 50(12), 2237–2250. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-020-01354-0
[20] World Health Organization. (2020). Health and economic impacts of transport interventions in Accra, Ghana. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240017306
[21] World Health Organization. (2020).Cyclist safety: an information resource for decision-makers and practitioners. https://www.who.int/cyclist-safety-an-information-resource
[22] Development Asia. (2016). A Strategy for Creating a Bicycle-Friendly City https://development.asia/case-study/strategy-creating-bicycle-friendly-city
Losing the War Before the Storm
Road Asset Management and the Policy Gap Asia-Pacific Cannot Afford
By Adwait Limaye | IRF Young Professional Programme Leader and Transport Policy and Data Specialist, Asian Transport Observatory (ATO)
I am a sustainable transport specialist working across Asia-Pacific, where much of my time is spent investigating what national policies say and what data reveals about where attention and investment actually flow. This article focuses on one such gap that I believe deserves far more of both than it currently receives.
Across many countries in Asia-Pacific, a new road connectivity corridor gets announced. Ribbon-cutting gets celebrated. Network expansion figures get cited as evidence of progress in ministerial speeches and multilateral dialogues alike. What rarely features in those conversations is the condition of what was already built.
Whether the roads are holding. Whether the communities they were designed to serve can still reach them: in the monsoon, in the dry season, a decade on. Expansion and maintenance are not competing priorities. They are two halves of the same responsibility. And right now, one half is being quietly ignored.
Neglecting road asset maintenance is not a technical oversight. It is a policy choice, and the Asia Pacific region is paying a heavy price for it.
A Gap Written in Asphalt
“Spend a dollar maintaining a road today or spend four to five rebuilding it tomorrow” (van Dissel & Anyala, 2024). I first encountered this message at the Asia-Pacific Transport Forum 2025, where it was put forward not as a theory but as an operational reality, one, the room largely already knew, yet somehow had not quite reckoned with.
It is grounded in how pavements actually fail: non-linearly, and faster than most budgets anticipate. Routine resurfacing, drainage upkeep, periodic structural repairs, deferred by even a few seasons, can push a road past the point of rehabilitation. At that stage, reconstruction remains the only option.
Road contracts tell part of this story. Most road construction contracts carry a defect liability period, typically between five and ten years, during which the contractor retains responsibility for the asset’s condition. When that period ends and ownership transfers to the government, the road enters a new phase, one where its future depends entirely on the next budget cycle. That transition, quiet and largely unremarked, is often where the maintenance gap begins.
The Asian Development Bank (van Dissel & Anyala, 2024) tracks the scale of that gap across Asia-Pacific. Countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nepal, and Pakistan are spending between 0.1 and 0.6 percent of GDP on road maintenance, against an estimated need of 0.5 to 1.3 percent. Road investment in the region, by contrast, is projected to represent close to one percent of annual GDP through 2035 (Asian Transport Observatory, 2026b).
What this tells is that road network is being expanded faster than it is being kept; and in some cases, by an order of magnitude.
The climate dimension sharpens this further. Asia-Pacific accounts for more than 60 percent (Koks et al., 2023) of global annual damages from climate change and natural hazards, despite housing less than 40 percent (Asian Transport Observatory and Life-Links, 2025) of the world’s transport infrastructure, with road networks bearing the majority of those losses (CDRI, n.d.). In such a context, the value of maintenance extends well beyond preserving asset condition.
A well-maintained road sustains lower hazard damage in the first place, preserving continuity of service for communities that have no fallback. Resilience may reveal itself after a disaster, but it is built before one.
What Policies Do Not Say
In development finance, what gets named in a national strategy or a climate policy is what gets funded. Road asset management, with measurable condition targets and maintenance commitments, is not systematically reflected in these documents across Asia-Pacific (Asian Transport Observatory, 2026a).
Having watched how policy language translates, or fails to translate, into investment across the region, I have come to believe this absence is not incidental.
The funding gap is real. But it begins as a policy gap. The reason this matters so directly is what might be called indicator lock-in. Embedding an asset condition target, a maintenance budget ratio, or a share of good-quality roads into a national strategy or a climate policy creates the reference point that development finance institutions use when assessing investment readiness.
Without that reference point, maintenance simply does not make the cut. Analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions and Long-Term Strategies1 across the Asia-Pacific region (SLOCAT and GIZ, n.d.) shows just how wide that gap remains. Only around one in three countries includes broad road resilience-related measures in these documents at all.
Just five percent contain specific repair and maintenance policy measures. In a region absorbing a disproportionate share of global climate losses, the language of maintenance is almost entirely absent from the very commitments designed to attract climate finance by signalling national ambition.
Some countries are beginning to move (Asian Transport Observatory, 2026a). Cambodia’s NDC commits to 5,000 kilometres of roads repaired to climate-proofing standards by 2035. Papua New Guinea’s National Roads Network Strategy 2036 sets condition targets across its entire network with explicit budget provisions for routine and periodic maintenance. China’s 14th Five-Year Plan details pavement recycling rates exceeding 95 percent on expressways. These are meaningful signals. But they remain exceptions, and the norm across the region is still silence.
The Human Price
A degraded road has a cost that never appears in any budget line. It is a pregnant woman who cannot reach a hospital because the rural route is impassable in monsoon season. A child who arrives late to school, or does not go at all. A labourer who loses a day’s income because the road is gone.
These are not illustrations. Across much of the Asia-Pacific region, they are realities, ones I have encountered long before they showed up in a dataset. They accumulate quietly, season after season, in ways that compound across entire economies. The difference between a well-maintained network and a neglected one is not a matter of degree. It is a matter of whether infrastructure serves people or merely occupies space.
When maintenance is written into national strategies, embedded in climate policies, and discussed with the same seriousness as new construction, the prioritisation tends to follow. Not as a theory of change, but as a simple truth about how policy systems translate into funding pipelines. The knowledge is there.
The framework exists. Performance-based maintenance contracting, systematic asset condition monitoring, road roughness indices as planning tools: none of this is
None of this has to start from scratch. The Asian Transport Observatory (2026a) tracks a comprehensive set of indicators on road investment, policy commitments, and asset conditions across the region, giving governments and financiers a clearer picture of where the gaps are and what others are doing. ADB’s Green Roads Toolkit (2024), developed to guide governments and project teams in planning and preparing road investments that embed sustainability and asset management from the outset, offers one such entry point. These efforts matter. But they can only go so far without the policy foundations that make maintenance a named, funded, and accountable priority. That part still needs to be written.
The Questions Worth Asking
A kilometre built and left to deteriorate is not progress. It is a liability deferred. In Asia-Pacific, a region already disproportionately exposed to climate risk, the communities depending on that road rarely have an alternative.
The transport community already knows the stitch-in-time argument. What concerns me, having watched policy cycles and investment decisions unfold across the region, is how rarely that knowledge finds its way into the documents that actually govern what gets built, maintained, and funded.
Is road asset management named in your country’s NDC? Does your national transport strategy look beyond the ribbon-cutting? Has preventive maintenance ever been treated as an investment rather than a cost? These are not rhetorical questions. They are the ones I find myself returning to. And they will determine what Asia-Pacific’s road network looks like in 2035. And who it can still reach.
Footnote
References
Asian Development Bank. (2024). Green Roads Tool Kit | ADB Data Library. https://data.adb.org/dataset/green-roads-toolkit
Asian Transport Observatory. (2026a). ATO Green Roads Profiles. https://asiantransportobservatory.org/analytical-outputs/greenroadsprofiles/
Asian Transport Observatory. (2026b, May 18). Asian Transport 2035 Outlook: Investment Needs of Low and Middle-Income Economies. Asian Transport Observatory. https://asiantransportobservatory.org/analytical-outputs/asia-lmic-transport-outlook-investment-needs/
Asian Transport Observatory and Life-Links. (2025). From Breakdowns to Breakthroughs: Climate Resilience of Asia-Pacific’s Transport Infrastructure. https://asiantransportobservatory.org/analytical-outputs/transport-asia-resilience/
CDRI. (n.d.). Homepage | GIRI. Retrieved June 23, 2026, from https://giri.unepgrid.ch/ Koks, E., Rozenberg, J., Tariverdi, M., Dickens, B., Fox, C., van Ginkel, K., & Hallegatte, S. (2023). A global assessment of national road network vulnerability. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, 3(2), 025008. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2634-4505/acd1aa
SLOCAT and GIZ. (n.d.). NDC Transport Tracker. Changing Transport. Retrieved June 23, 2026, from https://changing-transport.org/tracker/
United Nations. (n.d.). All About the NDCs. United Nations. United Nations. Retrieved June 23, 2026, from https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/all-about-ndcs
van Dissel, S. C., & Anyala, M. (2024). Road Maintenance Financing and Cost Recovery Options: The Future of Road User Revenues in Developing Asia and the Pacific. (100). https://www.adb.org/publications/road-maintenance-financing-cost-recovery-option
