Making Public Transit Work for Women

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We have written before about how more female bikers means that a environment is more friendly to bikes. At Planetizen, they interview the author of a new study who has found a similar issue in public transportation. More women take public transportation than men, but they find it to be generally unsafe, and if our public transit was designed with giving women a feeling of safety while using it, ridership would increase:

Women have significant concerns about riding transit, and there is a mismatch between the practices of transportation agencies and some of the wishes of women riders. For example, women are much more scared waiting at the bus stop or transit station than within the enclosed space of the transit vehicle. Yet most transportation safety resources are concentrated on the vehicle. Women were also not comforted knowing that there was a camera or CCT technology. They were not against it, but they felt that if anything happened to them the camera would only help after the event, not during.

Read the full interview, which also discusses the "last mile problem" in terms of safety, as well as what transit authorities can do to make their systems more friendly to women.Image courtesy of Flickr user net_efekt.