Road Safety by Design

The ask

Build a specialist urban road safety consultancy that adapts Helsinki's proven safe-system infrastructure toolkit — separated pedestrian corridors, junction redesign, speed calming — for Bangladeshi city corporations, charging on government contracts and ADB/World Bank project budgets.

Why now

Bangladesh recorded over 25,000 road deaths in 2023 (WHO estimate), making road trauma one of the country's top causes of premature mortality. ADB and World Bank are both running active urban transport projects in Dhaka, Chattogram, and secondary cities with explicit road safety components — and both institutions now require safe-system design documentation before disbursing funds. Helsinki's model (zero pedestrian fatalities in recent years across a city of 660,000) is well-documented and has been codified into a transferable design manual by the OECD. The gap is local engineering firms that can translate it.

Why Bangladesh

Dhaka loses an estimated 1–2% of GDP annually to road crash costs (medical, productivity). City corporations are under pressure from the courts following a 2018 student road safety uprising that shut the capital for days. RAJUK and the Dhaka North/South City Corporations have capital budgets but lack in-house safe-system expertise. Foreign consultancies price themselves out of routine municipal contracts — a locally embedded firm with international methodology wins on cost and relationship.

As a business

Revenue comes from government engineering contracts (junction redesign, footpath audits, school-zone packages) and from ADB/World Bank project technical assistance components. A single Dhaka junction redesign contract runs ৳50–150 lakh depending on scope; a city-wide pedestrian infrastructure audit for a secondary city can reach ৳200 lakh. Repeat revenue comes from monitoring and maintenance contracts once redesigns are built.

Economics

Move the sliders to model your own road safety consultancy. Defaults are order-of-magnitude estimates — pressure-testing them is part of what a founder pitches us.

What ZEPH would back

We want a civil engineer or urban planner who has worked inside a city corporation or a multilateral urban project and understands the procurement calendar. The right founder has one government pilot contract already committed and a relationship with at least one ADB or World Bank project team. This is a services business, not a tech play — we back it because the climate co-benefits (fewer cars idling, more walkable cities, reduced trauma burden on the health system) are large and the market is structurally underserved.

Impact

Bangladesh records 25,000+ road deaths annually — a mortality burden that costs 1–2% of GDP in medical and productivity losses. Each junction redesign that reduces conflict points by 30–50% (documented outcomes in Helsinki and Tampere pilots) can prevent 2–5 fatalities per year at that location. Safer streets also measurably increase pedestrian and cycling mode share, reducing private-vehicle emissions: a 5% shift in Dhaka modal share away from CNG autos could avoid 50,000–80,000 tCO₂e/year across the metro. The consultancy creates 20–60 direct jobs in urban engineering — a skills base Bangladesh currently exports to foreign firms.