Safety concerns are keeping women in their cars and off of public transit

South Park Studies: Safety in the Public Realm

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Public transit is one of the biggest draws of urban living — but women in LA are taking advantage of new rail lines at about half the rate of men. Safety is a main factor keeping women in their cars, even during regular commute hours. WIRED explored the reasons for this discrepancy, and possible solutions, in this article:

Want to Boost Transit Ridership? Try Making Women Feel Safer
WIRED, January 23, 2019

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CASE for taking public transportation is pretty solid, especially in big cities where options are abundant and traffic unbearable. More than three-quarters of Americans drive by themselves to work every day, but taking a bus or a train instead might save about a third of your household’s daily carbon emissions. If you’re all in on the environment, and you live somewhere with frequent, quality public transit, your commute should be a no-brainer.

But another factor is keeping many women from from sharing a ride to work. According to a peer-reviewed paper presented at the annual Transportation Research Board Meeting last week, women who live near transit may be skipping it because they feel unsafe, even during the daily commute.

The work, by transportation researchers at Tamkang University in Taiwan, the University of Southern California’s public policy school, and UC Irvine’s school of planning and policy, took advantage of a natural experiment. In April 2012, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority opened a new light rail line, called the Expo. In theory, the line gave more people in West LA access to public transit. But to figure out people’s true travel habits, the researchers distributed and received back 141 surveys from households within a half-mile of the new line. (They included a control group of households that did not live within walking distance to transit.)

The researchers found, yes, more households close to the new line said they used public transit after it opened, increasing their rail trips by 4.3 percent weekly. But women said they increased their trips only half as much as men, even though they reported the same sorts of pro-environment sentiment. And of the women who said they wouldn’t use the nearby transit option, 20 percent said they were avoiding it for fear of harassment or for their safety — on the train, at the station, or on the walk to and from it.

Read the full article here.

FURTHER READING

Metro‘s Women and Girl’s Governing Council is in the process of drafting a Gender Action Plan with the goal of understanding the different mobility needs of men and women. Learn more about the Council and their work here.

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South Park Studies is a new initiative designed to bring you news and resources on the topics we hear questions about the most — homelessness, daycare and school availability, transportation, and more. Each topic will consist of a multi-week series of article recommendations, volunteer opportunities, and more. Catch up on our first series, exploring homelessness, by clicking here. Learn more about South Park by visiting southpark.la.