Award-winning RAP programme Belize is set to commence a new 700km assessment of major highways funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to inform road safety investment and sustainable growth in the country.

The assessment is part of the IDB’s Group Country Strategy with Belize 2022-2025 which aims to help the country overcome the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and support efforts to achieve long-term robust, inclusive, and sustainable growth.

iRAP will provide technical quality assurance support for the assessment led by SDK Ingenieria.

Since 2010, Belize has achieved award-winning road upgrades and public health outcomes.

Belize was awarded a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award and IRF Flagship Road Safety Award in 2015/16 for the Belize Road Safety Project which saw capacity built for local engineers and national fatalities slashed from 33 deaths per year to a 5-year average of 8.

The project, an initiative of the Caribbean Development Bank in partnership with the Ministry of Works, achieved targeted, evidence-based upgrades to the Belize City to Belmopan Road which until that time had claimed half of Belize’s annual road deaths. The upgrades, informed by iRAP’s recommendations, raised the safety performance of the road from 10% 3-star or better to 100% 3-star or better. See the Belize City to Belmopan Case Study here.

Stage 2 assessments in 2018 continued to benchmark safety performance and inform interventions replicated across the network.

This new project continues to shape Belize’s journey eliminating high-risk roads aligned to the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.

IDB and iRAP’s 5-year partnership is promoting programmes and projects which significantly improve the safety of the roads in Latin America and the Caribbean. The partnership is focused on reviewing the methods utilized in evaluating previous investments in road safety infrastructure and providing guidance and recommendations for future investments, with an emphasis on methods for measuring programme effectiveness.

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash