In 2011, Sweden introduced a gender equality initiative that required municipalities to re-evaluate all their policies and activities through a gender lens. In the Swedish town of Karlskoga, one government official joked that at least snow clearing would likely be spared scrutiny by the ‘gender people’. instead, as Caroline Criado Perez points out in her book Invisible Women: Exposing the Data Bias in a World Designed for Men it instead made them ask the question: was snow-clearing sexist?
The answer to that question turned out to be far different from what the naysayers likely suspected. As Invisible Women points out, studies soon showed that the practice of clearing roads before footpaths, disproportionately disadvantaged women, who are more likely to walk, over men, who are more likely to drive. In Sweden, once aware of the gendered impact of the sequence of snow clearing, Karlskoga was switched: pedestrian areas first, general road users second.
They reasoned that changing the order of snow clearing:
[W]ouldn’t cost any more money, driving through three inches of snow is easier than to push a buggy (or a wheelchair, or a bike) through three inches of snow.
Back in Karlskoga, it also became clear that making the change in snow clearing priority would actually save the town money. The cost of pedestrian accidents due to icy conditions – both in terms of healthcare costs and lost productivity – was about twice the road maintenance cost, and this dropped. In the end, Karlskoga wasn’t the only one to spot the link. In Stockholm, accidents have halved since the city started clearing its 200km of joint cycle and pedestrian lanes of snow.
Karlskoga’s original snow-clearing schedule did not set out to deliberately disadvantage women. Like many of the examples in Invisible Women, however, it quickly highlights that a gender gap exists within our transport data. Without acknowledgement of a data set’s incompleteness, decision-making based on that data is inherently biased. As a result, the absence of data on women and (equally) an awareness of the data gap created leads to data-based decisions that disadvantage women.
As Criado Perez explains, decisions such as the snow-clearing schedule in Karlskoga did not set out to deliberately exclude or disadvantage women:
They just didn’t think about them. They didn’t think to consider if women’s needs might be different. And so this data gap was a result of not involving women in planning.
Invisible Women offers much food for thought on the hidden gender bias in transport decision making. Often this bias stems from the lack of data we collect on women at all. For example, by not collecting data on women’s travel patterns, or only on commuting, the data tells an incomplete story.
Men’s ‘standard’ travel pattern
Let’s start with the basics: men are more likely to have a direct, point-to-point daily journey than women.
As Criado Perez summarises:
If a household owns a car, it is the men who dominate access to it.
Women, by contrast, are more likely to walk or use public transport, which the data presented in Invisible Women reflects: ‘In France, two-thirds of public transport users are women’, and in US cities Philadelphia and Chicago they are: ‘64% and 62% respectively’. In London, women are making about 8% more trips per weekday than men.
The impact of trip-chaining
Women’s travel patterns are generally more complicated than those of men. So complicated, in fact, that they are often not considered or catered for at all in transport planning. ‘On the whole, engineers focus mainly on ‘mobility related to employment’, Criado Perez summarises. However, women’s travel demands are not limited to commuting. As Criado Perez also points out, ‘[w]omen do 75% of the world’s unpaid care work and this affects their travel needs’.
The need to accomplish multiple objectives within the same overarching journey leads to women often doing something that men don’t have to do: ‘trip-chain’. That is, tie together small trips into a larger journey plan. Criado Perez points out that this is a typical travel pattern for women across the world.
The multitude of reasons for these consecutive trips isn’t hard to guess. Household management (food shopping trips), caregiving (accompanying an elderly relative to the doctor or picking up a prescription) and much more all play a part, as they are all areas of activity that fall primarily on women. Most of all, however, Criado Perez points out that in London, women are three times more likely than men to drop off children at school.
Overall, women are ‘25% more likely to trip-chain’, Criado Perez adds, ‘this figure rises to 39% if there is a child older nine in the household’. Indeed across Europe, the burden of school drop offs and pick ups mainly falls on women. Women in dual-worker families are twice as likely as men to drop off or pick up children on their commute.
An EU report on satisfaction with urban transport exemplifies how ingrained the male bias in transport planning is. As Criado Perez points out, the study refers to male travel patterns as ‘standard’ whilst bemoaning the failure of European public transport networks to adequately serve female users. The terminology used in transport planning is another manifestation of the male bias in the sector. Prof Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, an urban planning professor at Madrid’s Technical University, tells Criado Perez of another example: the term ‘compulsory mobility’ is used to refer ‘all trips made for employment and educational purposes’ but excludes care trips. This trivialises the importance of care trips and devalues transport planning for them. It reinforces not valuing, and therefore not catering, for women’s travel patterns.
Short tripping
The intentional omission of shorter walking and other ‘non-motorised’ trips when collecting travel data is another example of the gender data gap in transport. These short trips are ‘not considered to be relevant for infrastructure policy’ Invisible Women quotes Sánchez de Madariaga as saying.
As women generally walk more than men, this omission disadvantages women disproportionately. Short walks form an integral part of women’s trip chaining. Women also walk further and longer distances. This is partly to fulfil their caregiving responsibilities, but also because on the whole women are poorer. As Criado Perez rightly summarises:
‘[T]he assumption that shorter walking trips are irrelevant to infrastructure policy is little short of an assumption that women are irrelevant to infrastructure policy’
The male-dominated transport sector
Bad or missing data isn’t the only contributing factor to the transport sector’s gender problem. Both are reinforced by the fact that women make up only a fifth of transport sector employees across Europe – with the UK below the European average. This gender imbalance fuels the bias in transport planning towards typically male modes and patterns of travel. As Sánchez de Madariaga explains to Criado Perez, as humans we are innately biased by personal experience. Since there are more men in the transport planning profession than women, this personal experience bias is skewed towards improving the male experience of travel – that is, the traditionally (and statistically) male commute.
In 2014, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women found a male bias in the planning, provision and design of transport systems. This was found to stem from gender imbalances in employees: women were not equally represented at any seniority level or within transport modes, and in particular not in decision-making positions. As a result, women’s experience of travel was not being considered.
Safe travels
A 2004 UK Department of Transport study, cited by Criado Perez, found stark differences in the perception of danger between men and women after dark. Criado Perez lists some of the study’s key findings in her book. The study found three out of five women felt unsafe walking around multi-storey car parks, waiting on a railway station platform, and walking from a bus stop or station. Half of women surveyed felt unsafe travelling on a train, waiting at a bus stop and walking to the bus stop. The figures for men surveyed were broadly at least half the percentages of women. A quarter of all men felt unsafe waiting on a railway station platform. A fifth of men felt unsafe walking to the bus stop, waiting at the bus stop and travelling on the train. Research by the UK government indicates that 10% more passengers would use public transport if passengers, especially women, felt safer.
Women adopt strategies to avoid feeling unsafe, Criado Perez summarises, pointing to research from across the world that shows ‘that women adjust their behaviour and their travel patterns to accommodate this fear’.
This might involve taking a longer, indirect route or only travelling with others. Some women have gone as far as to leave their jobs to avoid the rush hour trip to work. ‘Crime surveys and empirical studies from different parts of the world show that the majority of women are fearful of the potential violence against them when in public spaces’ urban planning professor Anastaisa Loukaitou-Sideris tells Criado Perez. Women and men also respond differently to their surroundings. Crime data from the United States and Sweden, cited by Criado Perez in Invisible Women, found that women tend to be ‘more sensitive than men to signs of danger, social disorder, graffiti, and unkempt and abandoned buildings’ as Loukaitou-Sideris tells Criado Perez.
One would think that the scale of behavioural changes women make would be enough to demonstrate that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Yet as Criado Perez points out, the blame is often placed on the women, instead of planners who have created unsafe spaces. It’s just a perception that the journey is unsafe, not a reality, so women needn’t be scared. After all, official statistics suggest it is men who are more likely to be victims of crime in public spaces and on public transport.
Those same official statistics, however, once again fall foul of the gender data gap. Once again, that gap is then worsened by the difference between male and female perception. For as Criado Perez points out:
The invisibility of the threatening behaviour women face in public is compounded by the reality that men don’t do this to women who are accompanied by other men.
Criado Perez cites a recent survey in Sao Paulo which found that two-thirds of women have been victims of sexual harassment and violence while in transit. Half of those incidents took place on public transport. By contrast, only 18% of men reported the same thing.
As Invisible Women summarises this ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ attitude, leads to men dismissing women’s tales of their experiences with a: ‘Well I’ve never seen it’.
The threat of sexual advances
All of the above is compounded for women by the ever-present need to deal with unwanted advances during a journey. As Criado Perez points out, these range across a wide scale, ranging from catcalls to requests for a name or phone number and much more. As Criado Perez explains:
None of these behaviours is criminal exactly, but they all add up to a feeling of sexual menace
As she points out, they also chip away at women’s confidence. The sum of these incidents is greater than its parts. It’s a cognitive load that male travellers do not have to deal with. Criado Perez describes women’s everyday angst so well in her book: having to be alert all the time, as they are being watched and men’s behaviour towards them can quickly escalate from a ‘smile, love’ to a ‘fuck you bitch’ – or worse, being followed home and even being assaulted.
And that threat of assault is very real. Criado Perez cites a 2016 study, which found 90% of French women had been victims of sexual harassment on public transport. Also, a Washington Metro survey which found that women were three times more likely than men to face harassment on public transport.
Criado Perez quotes urban planning professor Vania Ceccato’s conclusion from her afterword to a 2017 special issue of the academic journal Crime Prevention and Community Safety entitled ‘Women’s Victimisation and Safety in Transit’:
Sexual crime against women in transit (cases of staring, touching, groping, ejaculation, exposing genitalia and full rape) is a highly under-reported offence.
Invisible Women points to multiple surveys on sexual harassment, across the world, that illustrate this problem clearly and in detail. A Washington DC survey found that over three-quarters of those who were harassed never reported the incident. Mexican government agency Inmujeres found similar. In New York City, the reporting rate was even lower. Here in London, Criado Perez quotes the findings of a 2017 London survey that found that ‘around 90% of people who experience unwanted sexual behaviour would not report it’.
It gets worse, an Institute for Transportation and Development survey of women using the metro in Baku in Azerbaijan, cited in the book, found that none of the women who had been sexually harassed on the metro reported the incident to responsible authorities.
All of these figures present an uncomfortable truth. As Criado Perez concludes in her book, the prevalence of underreporting means official police data is not telling the whole story.
The statistics listed in Criado Perez’ book illustrate that the vast majority of these incidents go unreported. Yet even when they are, as Invisible Women, they are often excluded from crime reporting anyway.
Why don’t women feel they can report these incidents? As Criado Perez outlines, the reasons are complex and varied:
Some of these are societal: stigma, shame, concern that they’ll be blamed or disbelieved.
To address these reasons for underreporting there needs to be shift within society, Criado Perez concludes.
There are some things that transport authorities can fix on their own. Sometimes the reason is simply practical, such as not knowing what is classified as sexual harassment or assault and to whom to report. But women also need to know that the authorities will take them seriously. Criado Perez cites the compelling case study of Nottingham Police. Under its new ‘misogyny hate crime policy’ the Nottingham police force recorded all incidents of misogynistic behaviour – ranging from ‘wolf whistling’, to being followed home and unwanted sexual advances – as a hate crime or incident. Suddenly, reports shot up. As Criado Perez points out, this was not because men had suddenly begun offending more. It was because women could see that their complaint would be treated with the seriousness it deserved.
Mismatch: what makes women feel safer
In London, 61% of women reported that concerns of crime and anti-social behaviour impacted how often they used public transport. Yet as Criado Perez retells in the book, when searching the academic literature on the topic, Urban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris found only three recent publications, not one of which looked specifically at women’s safety while travelling.
Loukaitou-Sideris embarked on producing her own research on the topic but, as Invisible Women makes clear, she encountered significant push back from the male-dominated workforce for doing so. Some of the defensive comments Loukaitou-Sideris received are quoted in Criado Perez’s book. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they follow many of the myths already explored: that safety issues aren’t gender-specific, or that there is no evidence that women are genuinely less safe than men.
The results make grim reading. As Criado Perez explains, of over 130 public transport agencies Loukaitou-Sideris surveyed, only a third felt that they should do something and shockingly only three agencies – just 2% – had done anything to improve women’s safety on public transport.
Yet one of the things Loukatiou-Sideris’ research clearly highlighted, was the fundamental mismatch between what transport authorities thought they should do, and what would actually make a genuine difference for female travellers. Perhaps the best example of this quoted in Invisible Women is the approach most authorities take to bus travel. Over 80% reported to Loukatiou-Sideris that they had CCTV, 76% had panic alarms and 73% had a public address system on their buses.
But as Criado Perez summarises:
‘This is in diametric opposition to what women actually want: they are far more likely to feel scared waiting in the dark at the bus stop than on the bus itself. And in fact, they are right to feel this way
As she points out, a study by Loukaitou-Sideris and her colleagues at the Mineta Transportation Institute ‘found that people were over three times more likely to be a victim of a crime at or near a transit [public transport] stop than on the vehicle itself’
Criado Perez is right to conclude that in most cases, given the choice, public transport agencies opt for a technological solution over staffing the network, and similarly right to conclude that there is a paucity of data on the value of the former, at least in comparison to women ’vastly preferring the presence of a conductor or security guard’ –because that way help is close by. Criado Perez suggests that once again transport planning may be suffering from the experience gap, in planning, between men and women:
[M]en prefer technological solutions to the presence of guards […] because the types of crime they are more likely to experience are less potentially violating
As we’ve already explored, women’s safety on public transport is important, as it shapes their travel behaviour: how many trips they make and by what mode.
Where staffing the public transport network is vetoed on cost grounds – although as Criado Perez adds it is ‘arguably worth it if it increases women’s use of public transport’– Invisible Women points to some simple interventions that can address women’s safety concerns. Accurate, real-time information on when the next bus or train is one such intervention. Here in London, such information is commonplace – whether from Countdown displays at bus stops or real-time journey planner apps. Where bus stops do not have a countdown estimated arrival times of buses are also available online or by text message.
This information is important because it can minimise the length of time women have to wait at a bus stop. Particularly at night, when the gap between buses can increase, it means they can time their arrival accordingly. Another low-cost solution to improve the night bus travel experience for women, that Criado Perez points to in her book, is allowing request stops along night bus routes. Request stops shorten how far one needs to walk once getting off the bus. Bus stop design can also be tweaked so that women feel safer whilst waiting at them.
Such interventions are important because some of the data we do have already demonstrates clearly that there is a night-time problem that needs to be acted upon. Criado Perez points out that in London whilst women account for the majority of bus passengers throughout the whole day, fewer women use night buses than men. Why are fewer women are using the night bus? We do not know, but as Criado Perez suggests: ‘it seems reasonable to conclude that feeling unsafe might have something to do with it’.
Of course, even where the will to make changes exists, the question of ‘value for money’ is one that will always be asked. Even transport agencies feeling the pinch and unable to redesign their entire bus system can take impactful steps to improve women’s safety though, as Loukaitou-Sideris’s research, cited in Criado Perez’ book, found that gender-based crime was not occurring across the public transport network equally. As she suggests, targeted interventions by the public transport authority at these hotspots would improve women’s safety when travelling and help keep costs low.
This does, however, return us to the crux of the problem – such targeting requires data that, in many cases, just doesn’t exist.
‘[T]he first step for transit authorities […] is to accept that they have a problem’, Criado Perez concludes, before any targeted actions to address women’s safety are attempted.
Tweaking the system for the better
How might we bridge the gender data gap that Invisible Women highlights so well? How can we create better decision-making processes that are not gender-biased and implement interventions that do not disadvantage women? ‘[W]e need more women in leadership positions, bringing their perspectives and experiences into the decision-making processes, greater consultation with women during policy making, and better analysis of the differentiated gendered needs within cities’ UCL researchers Tiffany Lam and Ellie Cosgrave conclude in their Women4Climate: Gender Inclusive Action in Cities report.
The report includes concrete recommendations on how to bring about positive change. To increase the diversity of those in leadership positions and support women in career progression, cities should invest in mentoring programmes. To improve consultations and policy appraisal, a gender lens should be applied to any options under consideration. Consultations should be designed to actively seek engagement with women and capture their views. Policymakers should assess the gendered impacts of public spending, in particular, the impacts of large infrastructure investments. Adopting women’s safety audits that capture women’s travel around the city and the obstacles to travelling would inform where to target interventions.
And last but not least, Lam and Cosgrave call for the collection of gender-disaggregated data. It, as Criado Perez makes the point in her book, is key to tackling the unconscious bias in data-driven policy making.
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez is published by Penguin (ISBN: 9781784741723). It is available from all good bookshops.
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I’m not sure if it is helpful to frame this as men-vs-women rather than carers-vs-office employees.
By putting these discussions in gender terms a way is provided for the issue to be dismissed based on irrational predudice rather than rational thought.
(For what it’s worth I’m a man who “trip chains” to take my child to nursery before heading to the office.)
I’m not sure if it is helpful to frame this as men-vs-women rather than carers-vs-office employees.
By putting these discussions in gender terms a way is provided for the issue to be dismissed based on irrational predudice rather than rational thought.
There’s ample evidence in the article, associated links and indeed Criado Perez’ book about how women are disproportionately impacted by this.
Unfortunately, this means that viewing this debate through a window of gender is sadly both appropriate and necessary at this stage.
To ‘counter’ your point: not doing so has been historically, and still is, used as a way of avoiding or minimising the issue entirely.
So whilst I acknowledge the point your making, I don’t think it’s a helpful one in this context.
Quick mod note
For future commentors: please don’t challenge the premise of the article. The evidence is presented there, and consider that if this was an article about what went wrong with Crossrail (or similar) you’d (mostly) trust our ability to interpret that and inform you of the reality.
So if you’re thinking of doing so, then the point has been made, I have responded to it, and please be aware that subsequent comments on that subject will be deleted.
There is a debate to be had here, and it is about ways to highlight and address the underlying issue. That’s what conversation should be focused on please.
You have a right to disagree with that, of course, but we also have the right not to print it here.
I was about to comment on the “actual” figures for women vs men assaulted in some way in public places ( Including transport ) – as opposed to the perception & fear of such things – but then re-read the section on under-reporting & societal pressures not to report.
Which makes the problem a really difficult one to solve, doesn’t it?
And that’s without opening the can of worms regarding female employees in transport.
( Recommended reading, perhaps: “Railwaywomen” by Helena Wotjtczak, Hastings Press, 2005, ISBN 1-904-109-047 ) ?
Doing work on travel barriers highlighted how transport appraisal can also be gender biased. Interchange penalties are incredibly high for someone struggling with a buggy and a small child making an unfamiliar journey while trivial to the male commuter on his standard journey to work. Bendy buses were a boon to the former but became a political football for male politicians who were more concerned about male car users.
The conflict between cycle superhighways (male dominated) and bus lanes (female dominated) also needs to be seen from a gender perspective.
Rail transport – heavily used by men – dominates media coverage, remains highly regulated and receives substanial subsidies while buses rarely make the news and outside London are unregulated, have seen substanial cuts and are of course mostly used by women.
The gender bias throughout the transport sector is pretty horrific.
( Recommended reading, perhaps: “Railwaywomen” by Helena Wotjtczak, Hastings Press, 2005, ISBN 1-904-109-047 ) ?
Added to the reading list!
A simple thing that improves safety and its perceptions and costs almost nothing. I was in Toronto some years ago and there the buses will stop anywhere after 9pm to allow a lone traveller to alight.
Of course a focus on women is appropriate here. But one of the last lines is so telling; a call for non-gender disaggregated data. Not to repeat too many points from the article, but it is amazing that so often the overall needs of all users – when taking into account the higher proportion of women using public transport – are disregarded when the people making the decisions are so male, and only thinking about their own experiences.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
As a woman in transport, and also a diehard public transport user, I really appreciate you pulling this article together.
I’m a frequent solo traveller to other countries to ride public transport systems, and I hate having to factor in safety concerns vs. simply jumping on the tram or train or bus, like many of my fellow flaneurs might do.
What the article doesn’t cover, but what also might be appreciated in future articles, is the high barrier to ‘fandom’ required in public transport enthusiasm. I often feel like I need to go further to prove that I’ve got the chops to play in the public transport enthusiast world, rather than just being accepted because I’m at a talk or transport jolly event. I’m lucky enough to have found some great friends in transport, but it’s taken a while to feel like I’m on equal footing with men when discussing stations or transport heritage.
@John “The conflict between cycle superhighways (male dominated) and bus lanes (female dominated) also needs to be seen from a gender perspective.”
Certainly the under-representation of women and other minorities on London’s current (and rather limited) cycle superhighway network is worthy of further investigation. In countries where cycling, and high quality cycle provision, is the norm, women make up the majority of cycle trips – probably because the bicycle is well suited to short journeys and the kind of trip-chaining described above.
Whereas London’s flagship CSHs (essentially a few short miles of high-quality provision in the very centre of town, with most of the rest of the network being of a very poor standard) is disproportionately used by people who will cycle a long way through hostile conditions to reach it. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that men in their 20s and 30s are somewhat over-represented – they’re coming in larger numbers from a somewhat wider area.
Good quality local schemes like Waltham Forest’s “Mini Holland” and Southwark’s “Quietway 1” seem to be achieving a more equitable result – it will be interesting to see to what extent the imbalances self-correct as more of the network is built, but if (for example) you’ve got to get two kids to school a mile from home in the suburbs, and then a 5 mile ride to get to work in Zone 1, then unless the first part of the trip is bikeable by children (which in most cases it won’t be, because most of Zone 3 and 4 is school run car-traffic hell), that parent is not going to cycle the rest of the trip.
@John Thorn: New York has the same policy at night, but I don’t remember the cutoff time for it. The one caveat is that the driver must think it is safe to stop at the location requested, legacy of an era of much higher crime rates than today.
@Angus Hewlett: do you have gender-disaggregated data for cycling in the Netherlands or Denmark? I’m really curious now, I don’t know the gender breakdown for cycling there. (I vaguely remember men cycle more than women in Sweden, but don’t quote me on that; in 2014 a bunch of party platforms said that 60% of PT users were women.)
This is a great article for many reasons, but I especially like the way it highlights the contrast between implementations and priorities. It’s easy to argue that the implementation of clearing the roads of snow, or the provision of CCTV does not discriminate between those who benefit from it. However we must also recognise that there are a limited number of implementations that can be made, and that the priorities of roads versus pavements, or CCTV versus moving a bus stop to be outside the 24h shop, are most certainly skewed towards the needs of men.
BTW, on a very semantic point, What this article refers to as “Request Stops” is what is technically known by TfL as “hail and ride”, which comes with its unmentioned opposite “ring and stop”.
I think for London buses the term “Request Stop” used to mean that you had to ring the bell or wave to the driver to get the bus to stop at a specific stop – i.e. the way all bus stops work today – as opposed to the historic (I guess original) approach which was that buses always stopped regardless.
There are some useful statistics regarding women and cycling infrastructure here:
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/sites/default/files/file_content_type/key_london_statistics_data_sheet_v2_1_22_03_2019.pdf
The gender balance on the quietway 1 route changed to 29% female after the improvement works.
And more here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/736909/walking-and-cycling-statistics-england-2017.pdf
Which points out that women are more likely to agree that “it is too dangerous for me to cycle on roads” than men – which is exactly what high-quality segregated infrastructure is supposed to address.
My perception, as someone who’s been cycling from SE3 into central London for over 10 years, is that the gender bias has shifted distinctly in that time.
Back in 2005-06 I was one of an exclusively male bunch of cyclists (though different as at least twice the average age). Cyclists were also almost all white.
Today, as I trundle sedately along Q1 or the A200 and then the appropriate Cycle Superhighway for the last stretch, is that far more women are cycling.
But it’s still very different from my observations in Copenhagen last summer and Amsterdam in March where cyclists:
– represented the population in both age and gender profile;
– did not on the whole wear Lycra and helmets, but ordinary clothes;
– moved slowly;
– obeyed traffic lights*; and
– did not use footpaths.
*Danish pedestrians particularly will stand for five minutes at a suburban kerb when there’s no traffic waiting for the green light to show they can cross.
@John Thorn
To be more specific, Toronto bus drivers will allows female(s) only to alight wherever they feel safest, after 9pm. No males are allowed to alight with her/them. I don’t believe that this policy applies to streetcar routes for road safety reasons, almost always being on busy main streets, and drivers of other vehicles won’t be expecting the streetcar to alight passenger(s) in the middle of a lane at an unexpected, not a regular stop location.
A lot of very interesting points here. Certainly concentrating more on “short tripping” seems like it would benefit everyone (but of course, women to a greater extent than men; I’m not trying to dispute the point of the article!). I’ve always found the lack of connectivity and joined-up thinking when it comes to these sorts of journeys to be frustrating in the extreme. And the safety issues too seem really obvious small improvements that can be made. As for the general lack of representation – well, I work in a different field where that’s also generally an issue today. It’s a very hard problem to solve, but certainly one where it’s worth trying.
Another one that leaps out is the abandonment of toilet provision (Crossrail, I’m looking at you) or the apparently low priority put on it (all TOCs, I’m looking at you, but especially Southeastern).
Proper comparison stats seem are hard to find, or I’ve lost my DuckDuckGo foo, but “half of all women will contract a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) at some point in their lives” and “1 in 2000 men per year contract a UTI” seem the common ones about, which suggests a rate some 30-ish times higher in women.
The things to do when you have a UTI are drink lots of water, go when you need to, but don’t force it. Poor toilet provision is hardly conducive to that.
@AlanBG
Thank you for mentioning footpath/pavement cycling which seems to have become endemic in parts of London, and always seems to go unchallenged. Needless to say that it’s almost exclusively young male perpetrators, and they seem completely oblivious to the older people and small children left terrified in their wake as they swoosh past inches away.
I think there’s widespread ignorance of the law here, but there also seems to be a reluctance on the part of authorities to enforce or educate.
It’s absolutely right to look at the needs of women in the transport system and to conclude that they have been neglected historically. But we also have to make sure that we don’t stereotype women in doing so. Women’s needs, like men’s are not homogenous and it would be wrong to base a discussion on women’s needs on the presumption that they are all home based, child caring and not working. At the same time, there are other ways in which the transport system discriminates. We are all aware of the need to put more emphasis on the needs of people with disabilities – so often overlooked in the past. But age, race, class and wealth are also very significant. So much of the transport system has been designed, historically, with the needs of active young to middle aged adults is mind. London Travelwatch did a piece of work a few years ago (largely ignored) showing how poorer people are actively disadvantaged by the transport system. For example, the discussion about road pricing always includes concern that poor motorists would be disadvantaged by road pricing, yet, in London, poorer people are far more likely not to own a car but to travel by bus and I’ve yet to see much concern about the impact of raising bus fares on poorer people. The transport system is not just designed with the inherent biases of men, it is the inherent biases of white, middle-aged, middle-class men (a bit like me).
The Equalities Act, of course, requires public bodies to take all these different categories into account and to reduce discrimination, by virtue of the Public Sector Equalities Duty.
One other point of concern is that we need to avoid the contradiction set out in the article that says women are the majority of bus users, so the bus system should be designed with their needs, but women are the minority of night bus users, so the night bus system should be designed with women’s needs to encourage more women to use it. Both may be true, but it looks very unequal.
Interesting to see that the first comment was someone refuting the whole article, (excellent one, btw) and I wonder how many more comments like hat we would have seen had John not put a swift stop to it.
We all know Reconnections is up there with the very best in transport analysis and we would all take your word for anything you write about, but dare to suggest sexism exists in transport…..
I think that first comment was denying the premise of the post rather than refuting it – and in a sense, that is exactly the problem. The instinct to deny the uncomfortable is a very strong one; if problems are systematically not seen, they can never be addressed.
Yup. But for that reason let’s drop the subject for now. Back on topic please!
@Paul “almost exclusively young male perpetrators”
Not necessarily. On my way to the station this morning (not cycling for various reasons) I narrowly avoided being squashed by two primary-ago children and their mother hurtling downhill on bikes on the pavement.
OF course, it’s perfectly possible to go on to draw the conclusion that behind this is the lack of cycling provision in Blackheath Village, which is true.
As somebody who has the propensity to use public transport at night, I too would like to see more staff at stations rather than CCTV, in this regard women are absolutely correct in expecting the same
An interesting and thought provoking article.
Two small instances of missing words in the article
“or near a public transport than on the bus” – missing “stop”?
“on when the next bus is going come” – missing “to”?
Makes me wonder whether TfL’s approach to restructuring the bus network with broken links and enforced interchange has ever been assessed from the viewpoint of women. The remark about the difficulties of travelling *and* interchanging with young children / buggies / shopping is well observed. As I now travel more in the off peak I see this more often. Of course enforced interchange also doubles or triples the potential concerns about waiting at unsafe / unfamiliar bus stops / locations with possibly unpredictable waiting times. While I accept you can’t have door to door public transport services for every conceiveable trip it seems perverse to be deliberately disadvantaging the greater part of your user base just to save money when the end result is likely to be *less* travel and *less* revenue.
Another potentially interesting live example in London is a consultation for a new 335 bus from Kidbrooke to North Greenwich. This has been long demanded by people in this part of SE London but there was a hope the route would serve Charlton and retail facilities on Bugsby’s Way. TfL have dismissed this option and are leaning towards a route that is as fast (and therefore shorter and cheaper) as possible to deal mainly with commuter flows. People wanting to travel to intermediate points like Charlton or the shops would be forced to change buses in inconvenient locations. One wonders if TfL have a proper understanding of the actual / likely usage of this new route and whether the gender aspect is also understood. I suspect not. The more effective option would probably (as I’ve no more info than anyone else) be to run the longer route but with a few targeted commuter express runs to deal with those needing the fast link at peak times. Of course that’s more involved and more expensive and TfL isn’t keen on “complex” bus routes and expense. The consultation on this route is also likely to be flawed for the reasons Nicole cites in her article.
@mikep Pregnant women also need the toilet frequently, and as we’re reminded when organising meetings etc, a significant proportion of women need the toilet at least hourly. And small children learning bladder control are most often in the charge of women
I understand about vandalism being a huge problem for public toilets, but if a station advertises its facilities as being open from 7-10am and 4-8pm, then I expect them to be so, and will be unimpressed when the excuse from staff is “we didn’t have time to unlock them”. Ditto when there’s engineering works so the fast line platforms are in use but the staff don’t bother to unlock the side gate to enable step-free access. (Streatham Common, Streatham, Norbury, Balham…)
I suspect transport user surveys severely underestimate short trips – twice I’ve experienced survey distributors trying to give out survey cards on the bus passing my kids’ primary school at 9am, hoping people jammed together will fill them in during the next two-three minutes, and alight at the back door for the survey to be collected (while half the passengers gratefully escape out the front door). In contrast the surveys distributed on trains have an option to post them back.
Good article.
Could you drop the one F word to allow linking to wider audiences.
An interesting article and, at least initially, a few men posting here effectively proving the points made in it. For the record, I’ve never bothered notifying anyone (who?) of unwanted behaviour on the bus or tube and I’m not aware of any of my friends who have either. It’s a case of ‘ignore and move on asap’, which will be why there is the appearance that only men have issues with other men.
On the ‘f’ word noted above by John Holt (which is, by the by, very common, so no don’t drop it) I’d note that ‘smile, love’ is as objectionable as it makes out that we’re here to make men happy. “F*** that”, basically.
When I didn’t have my own car I would often accept lifts from friends if there wasn’t a simple/fast route home. Once I did get my own transport I started giving lifts to friends, even if I’d go ten miles out of my way *because it is safer*. In these days of bus route cut-backs – especially outside London – I wonder too whether the early experience of taking buses and so carrying on through life is being lost. In my teens I would regularly take an 11pm bus from our nearest town back the 12 miles to my village. Now the last bus is at 6pm so people have no option but to get taxis or buy a car.
That 2004 survey that found that a higher proportion of women felt unsafe on certain situations than the proportion of men. Did the sampling methodology take into account people who are less likely to be out and about, because of such fears, and thus unlikely to meet a researcher? The imbalance could actually be much greater
It’s not only women who need more public toilets. Many men over 50 have an enlarged prostate, making it essential to know where toilets are on any journey.
Another way of looking at all this is to take any disadvantaged/unrepresented/ignored group and treat their problems seriously. In almost all cases the benefits will accrue not only to the target group but to much of the rest of the population – at least sometimes in our lives.
So the classic case is lifts for the disabled. You actually benefit mothers (and fathers!) with small children, people with shopping, people with a temporary incapacity, heavily-laden airport travellers etc.
Now translate that to this example. Women want to feel safer but so do men. Women tend to be more cautious when as men tend to be over-confident (a generalisation I know) so the fear of crime will show a significant difference. But I suspect if you did the statistics of people who had a fear of public transport who had experienced violence on it you might get very different results. And whilst women show the most concern it is actually young males who are most likely to be assaulted on the Underground. So basically what is good for women is usually good for men. And if women find it difficult to report sexual assaults think how much more difficult it is for men to report equivalent (male on male) assaults.
One could go on. As pointed out, access to toilets is not just a female issue. Make cycling safer for women by providing segregated cycle routes and men also benefit. Providing space on trains and trams for push-chairs and prams means that others also benefit from the extra space when they need it.
One could also ignore the morality and just look at the accounts. Public transport infrastructure costs a lot to provide but the marginal cost of providing for each additional person is it is small and, in most cases, they will generate revenue. So it just makes good financial sense to be as inclusive (in every way) as possible.
One of the good things regarding personal safety is that people tend to feel more secure with more people around so there is a potential virtuous circle. It is notable that often leisure travellers at night a very often female and often amount to well over 50% of the people around. The difference is that males are often travelling alone whereas females have a greater tendency to travel in groups and stick with each other.
PoP makes a very good point. Some years ago, I did part of a Masters’ in International Development, an area of study that has more points of view then Social Work or even Economics.
One paper took the stance that all development work is actually a woman’s issue – i.e., address the women’s issues and you resolve all the other evelopment issues along the way. Wasn’t sure I agreed 100%, but the idea definitely “has legs”.
The idea that redressing injustices towards women will also benefit men is interesting, and is clearly often accurate. But it still makes me uneasy, because it seems to carry a hidden implication that fixing things for women might not otherwise happen. It feels like “Oh look – men win too – so let’s do it!”
Male domination of transport spaces extends to the pedestrian realm as well. This article notes some of the research done on how men can dominate footpaths.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/11/i-decided-start-walking-down-street-man-spoiler-it-didn-t-go-well
Malcolm,
That depends on whether the important thing is for it to happen or for it to happen for the right reasons. Anyone experiencing a transformation of a place from one that feels dangerous to one that feels safe doesn’t generally care too much how or why it was achieved.
Gavin Mclelland,
And the sentiment of that example gives one explanation of why women cyclists tend to be killed more than male ones. A male cyclist will typically boldly claim his road space forcing other vehicles to recognise and adjust for his existence. A female cyclist has the unfortunate tendency to try and avoid such bold manoeuvres and stick more to the side of the road. This has the effect of being overlooked and more vulnerable to left turning vehicles.
A possible alternative way of looking at this is that testosterone means that male cyclists are less concerned if they get shouted at by other angry drivers. But obviously not all males just as some females are more than capable of giving as much as they get.
PoP suggests “And whilst women show the most concern it is actually young males who are most likely to be assaulted on the Underground.” which, I’d strongly argue, is exactly the misguided conclusion that the paper in the article warns about, because you are defining “assault” in a primarily male-affecting way.
“Assault” can be violently physical – stabbings, etc – which are indeed probably strongly (young) male-affecting and will almost always get reported. But the verbal and physical – unwanted touching, etc – which will be targetted upon girls and women by men *of all ages*, is as strongly-affecting. I’d also note that every woman I know (indeed I’d say ‘ever woman there is’) will have experienced males’ touching and verbal assaults. It isn’t that “women find it difficult to report sexual assaults” (no need for the demeaning “if” there), it’s that we don’t see much point in doing so as the perpetrator will almost certainly have disappeared into the crowd and be untraceable, so what’s the point. We don’t like it at all, but it’s almost the ‘cost of doing business’ in using public transport.
I haven’t got a source, but I remember a long time ago, perhaps in Modern Railways seeing a quote about the most common type of person using Inter-City trains. It was women travelling on their own, as opposed to the male businessmen that had been expected.
I agree wholeheartedly with PoP’s point.
If transport planners are failing to take women’s experiences and priorities into account when doing their jobs – as this article very successfully argues – then that would suggest they are failing to do their job fully. They should be being as rigorous as possible to have data that reflects reality for everyone.
I would however be very wary of for example suggesting that a bus network that requires changes at interchange nodes is inherently worse than one that provide through journeys.
As an extreme example – if a direct bus route could only support a 30 minute headway, whereas a route with a change a 10 minute headway – that would mean in the case of the direct route potentially 20 minutes longer waiting at a bus stop – inherently a negative as described in the article. Meanwhile a properly designed interchange will make use of things like Kassel kerbs, level boarding and same stop interchanges in order to make it easy to use for everyone – especially those with buggies etc, thereby providing a usable 10 minute frequency.
Equally the additional air pollution from dozens of half-empty buses providing direct routes (compared to a single trunk route) I imagine (based on the arguments in the article about walking) also impacts women disproportionately.
In short – there is always a compromise to be found – and whilst I won’t argue that is being done well in London (where finances rather than proper usage analysis seems to be the leading decision-making tool), it is possible – and necessary to design a network that works for all users, with the data to back that assertion up.
@ DM1 – as you are responding to my observation earlier I’d just say that the important aspect is that precisely nothing has been done to improve / increase interchange facilities where TfL have ripped away through services. It has just been blithely assumed that existing stops are good enough. London Travelwatch have raised this issue repeatedly and nothing has been done. Of course money is short but how much does it cost to put in more seats or a larger bus shelter with proper lighting to cater for larger numbers waiting? TfL couldn’t even be bothered to provide details of what routes were actually changing on the yellow notices they affixed to bus stops in Central London and Camden. What’s the point of that? They just assume everyone can and will access their website. Is that actually a valid assumption that has been verified against gender and other factors?
We also have the palpably ridiculous situation in Walthamstow where bus routes have been taken *out* of the bus station thereby worsening interchange, reducing choice and service levels in the bus station and removing a convenient arrivals stop. All of this creates more pedestrian moves, some multi legged on complex traffic light junctions, and makes the system less convenient. I can’t believe anyone assessed this from the point of view of gender. Heck they didn’t even assess it from the viewpoint of basic good practice. They just botched it to fit in a cycle scheme.
I completely take your point about relative frequencies etc. However I did carefully make the point that it was not possible to provide for every journey combination and therefore people will always need to change buses. The issue is about vastly increasing the volume of interchange dependent journeys.
Whilst it is a sensitive topic, I think it is important to distinguish between actual safety issues and perceived safety issues. This is not because the former is important and the latter ‘imaginary’ but because both are important but may have different remedies. If you don’t know whether your problem is actual danger or the perception of danger, the implemented mitigation may be inappropriate.
Lighting is a classic example. The actual crime-deterrent effect of improved lighting is often slight compared to other factors, but the impact decent lighting can have on the perception of safety can be huge. We are all a little bit afraid of the dark, and even if that fear is not always rational, it is always real. Lighting is unlikely, therefore, to have much effect on crime rates on transport, but can make people feel more comfortable using it at night.
As described in the article, levels of both actual and perceived risk can change with gender, meaning it is even more important to well understand the problem before prescribing a solution.
As a grandfather who has been actively taking a childcare role I am now acutely aware of the limitations of public transport in London for those accompanied by young children. I’m not unique but it is quite obvious, as Nicole writes, that females make up a disproportionately high percentage of those who travel on public transport with young children. “Is there room for my buggy?” is a constant nagging question. “Are their steps and are they limited enough to enable me to carry the buggy?” is another one.
The point made about bendy buses and their removal based on mostly male concerns is a strikingly valid one.
Another instance where mostly female concerns are being ignored is on trains. SWR are refurbishing their class 444 trains. These are the ones that have doors only at the carriage ends. My daughters often visit their mother in Winchester at weekends from London using these trains, and are very conscious of how difficult it is to use them with a child in a buggy, even when the commuting crowds are not there.
They are purpose-designed limited stop commuting trains, and are very good for that purpose, but at weekends they are full of families and travellers with big cases who find them very unfriendly.
SWR’s refurbishment plans totally ignore this female/family requirement. With a bit of imagination, modifications which advantage both types of user could be provided.
@Malcolm
“The idea that redressing injustices towards women will also benefit men is interesting, and is clearly often accurate. But it still makes me uneasy, because it seems to carry a hidden implication that fixing things for women might not otherwise happen.”
Thank you for articulating something that also troubled me.
@AW
Like John Holt, I agree this is an excellent article but the open use of intemperate language is enough to get the site blocked in some places.
I note that you have no objection to such in the article but have still used asterisks in your own response.
I beleve that the L-R editorial team have to decide whether their policy is appropriate and, if so, consistently applied.
Some factors to be considered are:
Is this some kind of professional journal or forum rather than a hobbyist chat room?
Does the use of such language alienate it from readers in places or institutiond where certain words are still deemed to bevoffensive?
@Fandroid – not to mention the family-unfriendly almost complete elimination of bay seating. Combined with the ever-popular highback seating beloved by operators, family train travel becomes seriously unattractive.
@AlisonW – the issue of gender-differenced travel needs (albeit not in those terms) was certainly recognised thirty or forty years ago – in NSE days, we knew that simply dumping train passengers late at night at some remote station was deterring travel by women on security grounds, many of those stations saw very low levels of useage anyway. The thought was to look at the passenger journey as a whole and to ensure a safe journey throughout, with guaranteed onward bus or train connexions from nodal points, with the nodal points being themselves revamped to give a high touch secure environment in terms of staffing, lighting and other facilities. We were very attracted by the Dutch Trein-Taxi scheme which enabled passengers to buy a coupon for a taxi journey at the country end, coupled with a guarantee that there would indeed be a taxi waiting. The downside was that smaller, lightly used stations would lose their evening train service and this made the project difficult to sell to unthinking politicians. Privatisation did the rest.
How much of this is actually transport’s problem to solve? I mean shouldn’t we be instead addressing:
-Why women traditionally do childcare more than men, instead of a 50/50 split? Pay gap/historical attitudes, perhaps?
-Why do women generally feel less secure late at night than men?
Neither of those should be the case in the true utopian society.
Alison,
Sorry. I was using assault in its Home Office category sense. If there is a sexual element (such as touching sexually sensitive parts of the body – such as the bum) then it is specifically classified as sexual assault which is generally treated more seriously than and differently to common assault or actual bodily harm. The classifications go to great lengths to prevent gender bias although it is a matter of opinion as to whether they truly succeed in this.
Perhaps I could have phrased it better. There is a fear of being attacked with an element of physical violence. This appears to be feared more by women but the victims actually tend to be male. There is also a fear of unwanted sexual attention which could include some form of common assault (such as touching) which obviously is primarily something that affects females.
@Ianno – “instead”? That would merely be an excuse of the transport (and any other sector) to do nothing (FM Cornford refers). It would be better put “as well as”.
It would be good to see a passenger survey aimed at finding out which types of transport in London are seen as most convenient and safe with female/male responses clearly differentiated in the results. My (old male) guess is that the DLR would score well for females, with a staff member actually there in the passenger compartment at all times, and well-lit universally accessible stations with real-time train information. It’s a shame that there are no bendy buses any more, because my other guess is that they would score much higher than double-deckers. That’s the end of my guesses. I was probably well over the boundaries of mansplaining anyway. I’ll ask my daughters to read the article and comment.
@ianno
“-Why women traditionally do childcare more than men, instead of a 50/50 split? Pay gap/historical attitudes”
The shortcomings of the transport system for people travelling with children would still exist, whatever the gender of the adult travelling with them. Nevertheless, there were transport options open to me when travelling with our children that my wife couldn’t use, simply because I was strong enough (and tall enough) to carry an occupied baby buggy up and down the steps at our local station unaided.
(I mentioned this problem at a “Meet the Manager” session. At another session some years later, the same manager, remembering me, proudly pointed out that the station now had a lift. Very good, but a bit late for us – the child in question had recently passed his driving test!)
“Why do women generally feel less secure late at night than men?”
Several reasons, notably that, on average, men are taller, heavier and stronger, and therefore less likely than a woman to encounter someone who could beat them in a fight (e.g a mugging).
Moreover, part of the perception of danger is an awareness of your ability to defend yourself and/or run away. The clothes, and particularly shoes, society expects women to wear (especially on a night out) could almost be designed to make them feel vulnerable. A handbag is also a much easier object to grab than a wallet in a pocket, and hands occupied in trying to keep hold of it are not free for fighting back.
With regard to toilets: their provision on suburban trains is in general a daft idea:
– They are very often dirty or out of service (due to vandalism, service disruptions, lack of time for cleaning due to tight turnrounds)
– They take up valuable space at a time when services are increasingly crowded in the peak AND off-peak
– They drive up the capital outlay and maintenance cost of the vehicles
It is a far cheaper and more sensible idea to provide toilets at every station, where:
– They are regularly monitored and inspected by station staff
– They can be cleaned/maintained as part of the regular station maintenance regime
– They do not take up much space that could be used in another useful way (unlike on trains)
Whilst I very much support improving toilet provision on the rail/underground network, I do not think this should be done by installing them on trains. I cannot see any reason why toilets should be installed on inner suburban trains.
@Graham H
Quite right! On the flip side, you could argue that it’s a sorry state where transport planning has to be reflective of failing to address other societal inequalities (which, to be fair, are always going to exist no matter how hard we try to solve them)
@Timbeau
Having two young children myself, completely agree that it would not solve the difficulty of using transport with children, being largely designed around the commuter (of any gender).
But this issue could be solved more objectively and less emotively by removing gender inequality from the equation first.
Re: Security. Yes, I totally get that…but lots of things you state (with the exception of physique, which is biological) are societally-embedded and artificial. But we shouldn’t shirk from changing perceptions and atitudes on this front either.
Genderisation and stereotypes start from birth…look at many toy adverts, girls are engendered to like dolls, boys like cars, etc. etc. etc. So, do wrong, and embeds attitudes for life, which many adults never challenge.
@Straphan – the tipping point (?!) for loos on stations versus loos on trains would seem to be when there are fewer stations than train sets (plus the point that it is very much cheaper to service loos on stations, and disabled loos are easier to accommodate in buildings).
When presenting transport schemes equality impact assessments all too often there are comments along the line that giving special consideration to the impact of schemes on women, young people and older people can’t be equality because that’s 3/4 of the population…
Good EQIAs also often show that the preferred solution is of little benefit to them, while the proposals that are more likely to help are rejected as undeliverable or not value for money. While I guess mainly shows that there is gender (and age) bias in delivery structures: It is quite noticeable that those public agencies that mainly cater for men’s transport needs (Highways England, rail system) are much much much better funded than those that cater for women’s transport needs (e.g. councils)
I am not sure though about the need for further data, I just think there is so much low-hanging fruit – if you cannot think of any you can literally pick up a group of women off the street, talk with them through their travel experiences, and you’ll get a list longer than you can deliver in a decade
@Christian Schmidt – I fear the selection methodology you describe in your last sentence might have been more, err, felicitously expressed. More generally, it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of people to put an appraisal value on specific female requirements in the same way as is done so for passengers generally.
Both Christian’s and Graham’s data-gathering approaches seem to take it as a given that the data-collector, and the decider-what-to-do-with-the-data, are both male. Could this be part of the problem?
@Graham H
“the tipping point (?!) for loos on stations versus loos on trains would seem to be when there are fewer stations than train sets ”
I think it’s more complicated than that – providing toilets on trains is technically and economically more complicated than in a fixed building, especially now that discharge to the track is not permitted
Average (or maximum) journey time is a factor, as is service frequency: if you have to jump off the train to use a toilet, how long will you have to wait for the next train?
That said, some of these matters are not well-handled. A recent well-publicised incident when a long distance train’s toilet went out of order resulted in distressing circumstances for a high-profile disabled passenger (and maybe other passengers who got less publicity).
Rather than the suggested solution of taking the train out of service (which helps no-one) surely the correct solution would have been to allow a “convenience stop” at a suitably-equipped station, either by holding he train for as long as necessary or allowing the passengers taking a loo break to use a following train if there is a suitable one close behind. Of course, that would delay the passengers, but it would remain the responsibility of the operator to get all passengers to their destinations and/or pay any delay penalties involved, so it is an incentive to ensure the toilets are more reliable.
@Timbeau: Which is precisely why I don’t see the need for toilets on inner suburban routes. These are characterised by:
– High frequencies (30 minutes or better)
– Short journey times (max. 60 minutes)
– High station density (meaning a loo break is never far away) and high station usage (meaning loos at stations will get used)
Note that what I am postulating is certainly relevant to London, but less so to other conurbations, where stations are less patronised, and are often nothing more than a platform with a bench and a sign, connected to a ramp up to the nearest road overbridge.
@Malcolm
In my experience data-collectors are usually female – typically the work is relatively low-paid, part time, and irregular hours (and needs good inter-personal skills) so no surprise there.
As for the decision makers, I observe that only two London borough councils have a female majority. (And if genders were parties, both those boroughs would be extremely marginal)
New Thameslink trains have a baby change facility in the toilets which is rather useful.
Station toilets tend to be in a disgusting state. It’ll be interesting to see if the toilet renovations at places like Victoria make a difference in the long term, or if it’s just impossible (too expensive) to have high quality provision.
Re: Graham H – “The downside was that smaller, lightly used stations would lose their evening train service and this made the project difficult to sell to unthinking politicians.”
Out of curiosity, why was this an inevitable outcome of introducing Trein-Taxi?
@Graham H – that’s literally what a (female) councillor did after there was an accident on the street outside the council offices where as she knew me and other (male) transport planners were working. So far the outcome is several dozen mostly very small projects that I would hope made a difference (at least some of those involved say so).
The key thing that I haven’t manage to deal with are a number of car parking spaces that are really an issue but other (male) councillors are very protective of them. Following reading Nicole’s article, I actually asked someone to go over there for the last hour and checking the drivers that use them – and guess what, it’s 95% men!
I should add that I also feel there is also a real competence issue – even for infrastructure projects, transport planner that are good in getting the details right for the type of projects listed by Nicole are in my experience in very short supply.
I see that (once again) we have got on to the subject of toilet provision. Im which case, we should be clear on what the criterion is that identifies the need for it. Presumably this is time.
Which then (once again) begs the obvious question: why does this criterion not apply to, say, the Piccadilly line, or any reasonable-distance bus journey through central London in the rush hour, or…?
Re: Ianno – “Why women traditionally do childcare more than men, instead of a 50/50 split?”
Very happy to be challenged on this, but I would like to suggest a biological biasing factor: the ability to breastfeed.
“Out of curiosity, why was this an inevitable outcome of introducing Trein-Taxi?”
Presumably because the taxis were provided only at the busier stations – e.g (UK analogy) at Sutton, but not at Epsom Downs. Even if they were available at any station, people guaranteed a station-to-home taxi service will choose a frequent service to a station three miles away rather than a less frequent one to a station half a mile away.
It’s known as railheading – if you have to drive (or taxi) to a station, you might as well drive to one with a direct service to your destination rather than to a closer station from which you have to make a connection. (This is why the station car park at Newark (population 27,700) has 289 spaces and that at Lincoln (pop 97,541) has 138)
@ Balthazar
I would suggest it’s even more fundamental than that: maternity leave means women have already taken a career break, therefore are more likely to extend their time away from work to care for their children.
The other factor is single parent/relationship break-ups: what percentage of children end up living with the father? I bet it’s not even 20%
@timbeau -yes. If we had gone forward to be able to trial a project, the obvious candidate would have been the Coastway services, where there are whole strings of stations that, in those days had useage figures down in single figures. These would have had no local taxi service to be built up and only hourly services, most of which conveyed no local evening traffic. As you imply, the nodes such as Worthing or Hastings would have had a more frequent service and the scope for building up the station environment. I freely admit that the corollary would have been the loss of evening trains at such places as Pevensey Bay (where the cost of stopping the train far exceeded any likely marginal fares)politically sensitive but a good business case – and more importantly, a better door to door service for the passengers.
Contrarywise, I can’t see the case for providing a Trein-taxi service from every lamppost.
No doubt, we can all have a happy subcrayonista time playing around with nodes and evening closures but the concept is reasonably clear. It would, however, be a mistake to think that it could work everywhere, especially outside NSEland – applying it to Lincolnshire or Cumbria seems tricky on many grounds, not least the lack of evening trains.
@Herned
“maternity leave means women have already taken a career break”
Parental leave is now “shared” and thus de-gendered, so a father can take some or all of the “career break”.
@straphan In contrast, my experience of trains leaving Victoria in rush hour is that all toilets on a suburban train will be used at least 1-4 times in the first few minutes of the journey, as people rush to catch a particular train.
Oddly, the train toilets are rarely out of order – perhaps because no-one would want to occupy them for anything other than their intended use, unlike the more spacious ones on stations which are often out of use (see my comment upthread).
People wanting to get home (or needing to pick children up before their childcare facility starts charging £1 a minute) don’t want to wait 30 minutes for the next train to their suburb, or even 15, but don’t want to cross their legs painfully either. Unless there’s evidence that at least 4 people are failing to squeeze onto carriages because standing room is taken up by toilets, it comes down to weighing up potential seat space vs toilet space and it’s a value judgement which should be prioritised.
The values of decision-makers and policy-makers will have affected data collection over time – e.g. the numerous times organisations (including transport ones) say they get few reports of women being harassed or assaulted, without taking into account lack of processes for staff to record harassment, the reactions women have had from staff when they have done so, and the simple fact that if you are a young woman travelling on the Tube daily, you aren’t going to bother reporting harassment when it happens at least twice a week (I did keep a log, for a year or so). There’s a lot to be said for becoming middle-aged and invisble…
@herned @balthazar It’s still women who give birth, and need a few months physical recovery time as a minimum. Add finances within couples where it’s more common for a male partner to earn more (partly as the man is still on average 4 years older), and it makes sense for most couples to have the woman take time out. Will be interesting to see what happens after a decade of shared parental leave being a possibility.
(By the way, I would like to thank LR Towers for such a genuinely norm-challenging and thought-provoking article)
Timbeau
Also Lincoln has internal bus services, whereas Newark has very few, so a smaller car-park at Linco;n “make sense”
PoP – way back up-thread …
Your economic argument from marginal costings is on the mark … now, will anyone take any notice, I wonder? And will there be all sorts of “arguments” showing how making all this “extra” provision isn’t worth it?
Though I heard something very similar, recently from the CEO of the Rail Operations Group, Karl Watts, saying that paying much better attention to “PRM” customers/passengers was a way to go.
Gender Gap & cycling
( Referring back to both Angus Hwlett & WW )
I’m very much afraid that, even as an obvious male, the “cycling agenda” seems to be driven entirely by the “lycra brigade” with no reference to “normal” cyclists or female cyclists with children.
This is horribly apparent in the LBWF scheme you mention, which does (IMHO) nothing for a “normal” cyclist such as myself, where,I have cycled to public meetings, only to be told that I “know nothing about cycling” – because they are the self-appointed & all male, supposed experts. It’s very depressing.
Re: Hessie – “Unless there’s evidence that at least 4 people are failing to squeeze onto carriages because standing room is taken up by toilets”.
It’ll be more than four people at peak times: the (correct) adoption of accessibility requirements mandates that if any toilets are provided on a train, at least one must be wheelchair accessible.
“It’s still women who give birth, and need a few months physical recovery time as a minimum”. No argument. I suppose I was making allowance for the ridiculous ‘she was back at work 48 hours after childbirth’ headlines being raised in response…
A really important article, thanks, that will hopefully be widely read and linked to from elsewhere.
An example of simple design factors is seat arm rests – on the NY subway, where they are not present, I have observed how ‘manspreading’ effectively denies whole places to fellow travellers except for those who are willing to be very bold and squeeze uncomfortably in.
On cycling and walking, the CS routes, even where fully segregated, are extremely family unfriendly, in particular where two-way CS tracks are on one side of a main road. The proximity of heavy vehicles driving in the opposite direction to cyclists on a track just a couple of feet or even a mere a kerbstone apart is frightening, and absolutely awful in wet weather when the spray exacerbates the dazzle from oncoming headlights. This is brand new infrastructure put in at enormous cost and disruption that is not safe and does not answer to the needs. It’s no wonder these routes are not used by ‘normal people’ outside the peak hour peloton rush.
Toilets.
I find it very, very surprising that it’s being seriously suggested that (presumably on-demand) extended station stops for toilet use are an option on inner rail routes.
With the current intensive use of the infrastructure around London, such that even 5-minute delays lead to station stops being skipped, that’s an option with seriously unacceptable consequences.
And yes, public toilet provision generally is dire, and getting worse (as if that were possible). Apparently restaurants and pubs welcoming non-customers with open arms are the answer, because no-one would fear being told where to go by the staff when asking to use them.
Re shared parental leave. The father is allowed to have 2 weeks paternity, then may share the mother’s maternity leave. The mother is required to take 2 weeks (4 in some occupations) off, then is expected to use her maternity leave.
Toilets at stations – all very well until the train gets stuck between stations…
An excellent article, and the first one that’s prompted more than a “that’s nice dear” from my other half…
I’d just like to echo the thanks for publishing such an excellent and thought-provoking article. Having read some of the newspaper articles that accompanied the original publication of the book it is really interesting to see the issues considered from a transport perspective. I suggest that anyone who wants to find out more should follow Caroline Criado Perez, the author of Invisible Women, on twitter.
Straphen – “High station density (meaning a loo break is never far away) and high station usage (meaning loos at stations will get used)”
When the 376s were introduced on Southeastern without toilets new toilets were opened at stations. Due to minimal staff levels on SE metro most are shut some or all of the day.
On the level of staffing subject I’ve been keeping tabs on passenger numbers using Abbey Wood station since TfL took over management in late 2017 and placed staff at barriers from first to last train. Rapid increase in passengers even with no Crossrail as yet and a declining local population due to nearby estate demolition.
https://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.uk/2019/04/30/abbey-wood-station-continues-strong-growth-since-tfl-takeover/
@Hessie: I have a sneaky suspicion the reason for the rush to use the loo on trains out of Victoria is because – until very recently – the toilets at Victoria station cost 50p to use – in contrast to the on-train ones, which were free.
As I’m currently scouting locations to buy a house in, I’d love to know what route you commute on. You state that a disabled-accessible toilet, which takes up about a quarter of the floorspace of a typical 20m train carriage, would only displace 4 passengers in peak hours. That kind of commute sounds like paradise!
Also, I’m not suggesting to strip out toilets from London-Brighton services. But quite why they should be provided on a local to Crystal Palace or West Croydon is up for debate – after all people *somehow* cope without toilets on trains when travelling into town from West Ruislip, Cockfosters or Dagenham East.
@Anonymike: This touches upon the issue of Network Rail and train operators not having any standards regarding service recovery following incidents. They simply assume that passengers stuck on a train are ‘safe’ and can stay there while the grown ups in orange figure out how to change a light bulb on a signal. London Underground (which famously has no toilets and very little by way of aircon on their trains) have long had a standard of evacuating every stranded passenger within an hour. That does enforce a bit of creativity (my partner once had to jump onto a train which pulled up on the opposite track somewhere in the vicinity of Epping), but limits passenger inconvenience. I see no reason why Network Rail could not adopt a similar standard.
@Murky Depths: The issue of slipping standards is something for franchise agreements (or whatever we will end up having in future) to resolve. Equally, a franchisee could choose to save money by reducing the service regime for toilets – or simply be forced to make more use of stabling facilities without CET emptying systems as their fleets grow.
Re Straphan,
Space take up by a toilet:
A current spec conventional one (SSWC) is 4 to 6 seats lost
A current spec wheelchair one (UAT) is 17 seats lost assuming you also install some tip up seats near by else it will head up to 21 seats lost.
Agreed on the effect of Victoria formerly charging 50p on on train toilet use.
Re Murky Depths,
Part of the issue with SE is that is has been on nearly 5 years of direct awards (aka minimal change) and the original contract was awarded before the lesson of gating and station staffing were learnt with LO, Southern (2009-15 Franchise) and the last Stagecoach stint as SWT.
Lets all hope Govia’s SE bid includes sorting these issues.
@NICKBXN – the CSHs are certainly not perfect, but a vast improvement on what was there before. I’ve used the good bits (Blackfriars Road, Embankment) a fair bit with family, albeit off-peak. Granted, as a Confident Male riding with kids there are privileges I can access (assertively occupying space in order to create safe space for the youngsters) which others might not feel able to.
Any problems with two-way CSH are more down to oncoming cyclists passing close and fast, and honestly 99.5% are extremely considerate when they see kids using it. The main reason it’s dominated by the peloton set is that most people have to ride several miles of dodgy road to reach it – and if a “MAMIL” will ride three times as far as a “normal” (however you define those terms), the potential catchment is ten times the size. (The other big user group is, of course, Santander and other bike-share users, who are taking the train to within a few hundred metres of the CSH & so have to deal with far less of the bad stuff).
[Off topic paragraph snipped. LBM]
@ngh: You’re talking seats. There are currently services on SWR where people are unable to board at stations like Earlsfield, Wimbledon or New Malden – never mind getting a seat! A UAT displaces far more standing passengers than 17…
And with SWR, we are talking about a Class 455/456 train with a sensible, 2+2 seating layout, wide vestibules, and wide corridors. These are now due to be replaced with Aventras, with each 5-car unit containing – last I checked – 1xUAT and 1xstandard toilet – thus 4 toilets per 10-car train. Not sure those women who commute in the peaks will appreciate the extra toilet provision, as they will most likely now be left behind on platforms.
But hey – at least Grayling (MP for Epsom and Ewell) can relieve himself on the way home!
in particular where two-way CS tracks are on one side of a main road. The proximity of heavy vehicles driving in the opposite direction to cyclists on a track just a couple of feet or even a mere a kerbstone apart is frightening
The previous arrangement on these roads was sharing the *same lane* with the heavy vehicles and no kerbstone at all. The cycle tracks we have are by no means ideal*, but the fact you can now make an increasing number of journeys across London without ever sharing tarmac with heavy traffic is a miracle compared to where we were just a handful of years ago.
Separately, I don’t understand Greg’s comments above – the vast majority of cycle campaigners you’ll meet have the goal of unlocking the freedom/cheapness/fitness/etc benefits of cycling to as wide a section of the population as possible. That’s why most rally against painted lanes – which only really benefit those already brave enough to be cycling in traffic – in favour of protected lanes, which enable new people to cycle.
(* the main problem with them, especially at rush hour, is that they’re massively oversubscribed)
Re Straphan,
Pretty much agreed as you have listed one on my local stations!
There will of course be an uplift from the current ~35% 10 car formations on SWML metro to virtually 100%.
Seating metro density is equivalent to about 0.40m^2/pax with a standing target of 0.25m^2
Grayling tends to go SWR to to Clapham Jn and then change to Victoria.
I’m not sure the cycling versus bus lane argument is primarily a female versus male issue, but rather is more a middle class vs working class argument.
How many cyclists in London (other than say gym instructors) do manual, physical jobs where they are on their feet all day, as opposed to working in a nice air conditioned office? If I was a nurse or cleaner or security guard I’d want to sit down on a bus to go home, not do more exercise. Catching an early morning “night” bus going into town is a reminder of the people doing essential jobs who rely on public transport to get to work.
@Straphan – There is, indeed, a guideline (that should only be breached for good reason) that detraining of a stranded train should be commenced within one hour of stranding, and completed within two. Read any RAIB report on a stranding going right back to the Thameslink farce in 2011.
A guideline that, I think I can safely say, has never been adhered to. Read the RAIB report into Southeastern last March and weep. It was 45 minutes between the first train having difficulties and control even realising they had a stranding on their hands.
Going back on-topic – another transport issue that had a disproportionate impact on women – toilet provision, onward transport options (or rather lack of them), late pickup from childcare. Another reason for the TOCs to take that guideline much, much more seriously.
It is preferable for passengers to have visible engaged conductors on public transport as well as cctv. You can’t ask cctv a question or for help.
Its preferable to have well lit bus stops with good cctv coverage of the stop and surrounding area especially late at night.
Staffed railway stations where people are exposed on platforms and visible are also preferable.
Hail and ride sounds like an excellent idea.
How about making transport designers spend two weeks each year trying to navigate transport systems with a buggy across multiple modes and seeing what they learn from that?
Re Robbo1000,
It is interesting to note that that the relevant (external) customer service benchmarking scores substantially increased at Southern after OnBoard Supervisors (OBS) who are visible and have been told to be so had fully bedded into the role vs the guards before the strike action, the guards having a noted tendency to stay in the rear cabs.
Merseytravel also conducted several rounds of research prior to ordering their new rolling stock (starts to arrive later this year) that passengers wanted a visible staff presence particularly in the evenings. Merseytravel then specified DOO stock with in-cabin staff later in the day. The RMT didn’t like this and ended up largely winning the dispute albeit that guard will be in the passenger cabin not the rear cab with the new stock and Merseytravel have been left with a £4m+ annual role to fill because they need the staff cost savings to help fund the new trains and then there is also the possibility of Merseytravel DfT grant getting turned off like TfL’s in which case it will be part of much larger blackhole.
@ANGUS HEWLETT: Data on women cycling in this article from Bicycle Dutch: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/women-cycling-make-it-happen/
56% share of cycle journeys. On a scale of 100, where the Netherlands is 100, UK cycling provision might merit a 12. If you build it, they, indeed everyone, will ride.
@Mikey C “I’m not sure the cycling versus bus lane argument is primarily a female versus male issue, but rather is more a middle class vs working class argument. How many cyclists in London (other than say gym instructors) do manual, physical jobs where they are on their feet all day, as opposed to working in a nice air conditioned office?”
While that’s true of the 10+ mile crowd (who are using bikes to combine, effectively, the benefits of taking the tube and going jogging), it’s far less so of those doing two, three, five miles (at least for those lucky enough to still have affordable housing within a few miles of their workplace – I realise that’s less the case than it used to be). Anything up to five miles isn’t really fitness exercise – it’s more like fast walking. (Five miles on a bike is equivalent to between one and two miles of walking).
What I do think the current debate (focused on zone one and commuters) has rather neglected is the scope of cycling to be part of a multi-modal trip – even the journey planner apps disregard it: they will tell me I can cycle 60 minutes to central London, or walk 20 and get a train that takes 20, but they won’t tell me that another station with a faster train is a ten minute cycle (or indeed drive) away (or, on Sundays, that the further station has a train every 15 minutes instead of one an hour.. I’m looking at you, South West Trains). Similarly, PTAL is based entirely on walking; there’s little acknowledgement of the extra connectivity that being able to “walk” three times as far, in the same amount of time, would open up.
And yes, there are practical barriers to overcome, in terms of the generally hostile outer London road environment, necessary density for bike-share schemes, hit-and-miss secure cycle parking at stations, good cycle storage in high density social housing etc., but it’d be good to see the potential recognised at least.
What makes subways safe? Harasser bans? Women-only cars? The New York City subway is asking.
Cycling is a unbelievably energy efficient for short trips.
My one-stop commute takes at least 25 minutes involving:
– Pushing small buggy wheels over bad pavement
– Lift (if working) or steps (if not) where someone may or may not help
– Muscling a buggy onto a full train
– Annoying other commuters (which incurs mental stress)
– Pushing through the crowds at Waterloo, which is hard work even if you don’t mind running over people’s feet to get their attention away from their s****phones
– Escalator
– More terible pavements
I generally feel hassled and knackered at the end of days where we’ve taken the train.
Whereas cycling is 1.7 miles (10 minutes) of generally smooth surfaces, on quiet or segrgated roads or through parks – my power meter says I use around 35 to 40 calories on each cycling journey which is equivalent to 15% of a mars bar.
(By comparison – cycling from Central London to Sevenoaks takes around 4 mars bars of effort, and cycling to York takes 38.5 mars bars of effort.)
In the interests or Mars Bar related accuracy (as I would hate for anyone to set off without a sufficiently large supply of confectionary to reach their destination and stop, out of energy, before arriving at their destination) I should note that figures for the short trip are averages for towing a 20kg child and 15kg trailler, whereas the other figures are real figures recorded for an unencumberd cyclist on an aerodynamically efficient bicycle.
@straphan – I was thinking of the non-accessible toilets taking up space of four people, which ngh confirms is the case. My commute involves ‘via Norbury’ trains, currently terminating Epsom Downs or West Croydon. The West Croydon ones have no loos, the Epsom Downs do (both 3+2 seat configuration, former are 4-car units, latter 5, I believe).
Whoever specified the layout for the longer-route train clearly thought one loo (accessible) per 5-car unit was insufficient and the extra (not wheelchair-accessible) toilet was a better use of space than more seating or standing room/bike storage. Given the usage of them even since the Victoria station ones became free last summer, I agree – since the rollout of 10-car trains on the line, and the timetable actually being kept to, I haven’t seen anyone left behind on the platform in the mornings, nor even at Balham at 5.45pm, which used to be a hell of elbows…
For commutes that don’t have available loos, people get used to where the nearest facilities are – most Tube stations have an adjacent pub, for example. It does become a factor in some people choosing not to travel, e.g. elderly people increasingly sticking to smaller areas near home as they age, which then leads to issues if they don’t feel able to travel independently to medical appointments further afield because they haven’t done so in years, leading to increased demand for hospital transport…
Mod note
We need to make some updates to this, so I’ve clipped the text out temporarily. Don’t let that stop discussion of the topic though! Will get bits sorted ASAP.
@Hessie In the London area, Southern use just two classes of electric train, the older 455s (which have no loos) and the more modern 377, of which there are seven different types, some in formations of four coaches and some in formations of five. Each formation will have a loo. Look for the doors with the red vertical stripe (which also indicate wheelchair/bike space). At first glance 455s and 377s look the same, but regulars get used to spotting the difference, particularly from the front. At night, the 455 has one light at the front and the 377 two.
The 377 formations of five are used exclusively for the metro services, like your ‘via Norbury’ trains. The 455s are usually 8 coaches Monday to Friday, but are often split into fours for weekend working (maybe to get the maximum use out of the 455s before they are replaced and to keep the mileage down on the 377s).
The 4-coach 377s are used for both metro (in single or double ) and main line routes, (single, double or triple ). All very adaptable, but on many metro routes 377s and 455s are used interchangeably so you may or may not get a loo on your train.
@Bob: How dare you introduce another unit of measurement?! The London bus being the universal unit of measurement for everything! This is going to lead to questions of: “How many Mars bars equal one London bus?”.
😉
The Mars Bar is a unit of energy. A standard Routemaster engine is 115hp (which shows how over-powered most motor cars are) which equates to 86kW, 74000kcal/hour or about 300 Mars Bars per hour. Assuming running at full capacity (75 seats), and running at an average of 25% full power (surely an overestimate), this rates at 1 Mars Bar per hour per passenger, similar to Bob’s 15% of a Mars Bar in ten minutes. (1 Mars bar per hour).
May I ask why the article was pulled? It seemed balanced, well researched and well written. I think Criado Perez goes much further than Nicole Badstuber, perhaps taking too many leaps of faith where there is no data, but this article introduced an important element of careful filtering. It would be nice to see it again!
Re: Straphan – “a disabled-accessible toilet, which takes up about a quarter of the floorspace of a typical 20m train carriage”. Are you including the adjacent wheelchair spaces to make that statement? Because they are mandatory whether or not toilets are fitted to the train (one space if the passenger-accessible length is less than 25m, two if between 25 and 205m, three if more – hence the difference in provision between the 8- and 12-car Thameslink Class 700s).
Re: RayL – “the more modern 377, of which there are seven different types, some in formations of four coaches and some in formations of five. Each formation will have a loo.” There are also 3-car Class 377 units. I note that you have used the word “formation” to refer to the units, whereas I would normally use it to denote the complete train whether composed of one, two, three or four units to form train lengths from 3 to 12 cars. (The most common use of three-car units being to form 10-car trains in 3+3+4 configuration, although at one time they were used for 12-car Brighton expresses.)
Re: Straphan – “we are talking about a Class 455/456 train with a sensible, 2+2 seating layout, wide vestibules, and wide corridors. These are now due to be replaced with Aventras, with each 5-car unit containing – last I checked – 1xUAT and 1xstandard toilet – thus 4 toilets per 10-car train”. Two 5-car units will have two fewer cabs than a 455+455+456 formation, and nor will they have the wasted vehicle length of the crew door vestibule behind each of the four 455 cabs. There will also be one fewer wheelchair spaces (if memory serves, the 456s have a derogation permitting one per unit, although since they virtually never operate alone this is academic – I believe that on the South Eastern the 2-car 466s are not having wheelchair spaces fitted as the idea is to eliminate their remaining individual use).
The cabs of the 466s are of a later design than the 455s which eliminate the guard’s vestibule. As they are never in the middle of the train they are rarely if ever used by guard’s anyway (although drivers probably prefer them as they have no end gangways and are thus less draughty)
The 377s were originally part of the same class as South Eastern’s 375s, and the 3car sets were originally provided to allow trains on the Hastings line to be formed of the maximum 11 cars that would fit between the tunnels at Tunbridge Wells station.
@Hessie: The issue with Southern is that they have only two unit types, one of which (Class 377) is used interchangeably on local routes (such as yours), and longer ones (out to Brighton, Southampton, and so on).
If toilets are provided at every (or at least every other) station, and are reliably open from first to last train, I really do not see why additional space should be allocated to toilets on trains doing local journeys. They are an unnecessary luxury in an age when peak traffic on the railways around London is becoming unmanageable.
@Balthazar: no, the wheelchair space is a very useful area on a train – particularly in the peak, as it allows a large number of passengers to stand in relative comfort.
On most local routes around London, we have long passed the point where we should care about seats. The issue is getting people physically on board trains in the am peak.
@Straphan
The point about station toilets being reliably open from first to last train is well made. Unfortunately, many toilets on suburban stations close around 10pm although the station may still be staffed until the last train.
Pity the woman (or man of a certain age) who has the temerity to spend an evening in London then encounters a class 455 for the journey home!
@Jims: They somehow manage to keep them open till end of service at those stations on the Tube with toilets. Or -as the tube toilet map states – you need to ask staff.
This is really helpful. The snow/roads thing is exactly the same in Finland where we live. It’s aggravating to feel like our daycare trip is of least priority and I will be sending this article to our city authority. Thank you.
How modern Vienna was shaped by women. The Austrian capital has been pioneering ‘gender mainstreaming’ for nearly 30 years. How did the city come to be so far ahead – and could its gains be lost?
Greg Tingey 30 April 2019 at 19:58
Gender Gap & cycling
[snip] the “cycling agenda” seems to be driven entirely by the “lycra brigade” with no reference to “normal” cyclists or female cyclists with children.
[snip] apparent in the LBWF scheme you mention, which does (IMHO) nothing for a “normal” cyclist such as myself, …
I would have thought that a scheme driven by the “Lyrca brigade” would be pushing for John Forester’s “Vehicular cycling” i.e. training riders, rather than changing the infrastructure.
Who is the Lycra Brigade? I don’t know about the indivduals at the council but the local LCC group appear to be for “normal” cyclists, looking at their webpage activites are:
– Bridget’s Evening Ride – “…relaxing”
– The Sunday Cycle – “…all ages and abilities”
– Walthamstow Family Bike Club’s Open Spaces Ride – “relaxed”
– All Ability Cycle Club
– Walthamstow Family Bike Club’s Newcomers Ride
As a confident lycra wearing cyclist I use main direct roads, rather than quiet backroads, but support Mini Holland and most of the infrastructure work (it’s not perfect, sheesh what have they done to Whipps Cross roundabout).
In the real world, more men than women use transport networks to get to work, as the majority of women stay at home looking after children. This may explain how the researcher arrived at her conclusions… QED
[Moderator’s note: It is not quite clear whether this comment is sincerely meant, or ironic. Either way it would probably have been removed as not helpful to the debate. However, we are leaving it in place because of the quality of replies to it. But would anyone else considering a comment which so spectacularly misses the point (or at least appears to do so) please be aware that it will probably not survive for long. Malcolm]
@ Cross(?)rail man
Sigh. Where to begin.
Did you read the article? I’m assuming you’ve not read the book nor the linked sources. The entire point of the article is that we only know that “more men than women use transport networks to get to work” because that is what the data we collect shows. Unfortunately how we collect this data is flawed and misses a large number of journeys and travel reasons. This is because the data collection methodology is too ingrained to look beyond the standard work commute.
As stated in the article, women travel more including to and from work whilst also incorporating school trips, appointments and care giving which for reasons best known presumably to men are not classified as ‘work’, although are just as important. This is helpfully termed trip-chaining but as mentioned above, is not taken into account by current data collection methods. Therefore funds are funnelled into improving standard commuting conditions because data shows this is where demand is, whilst missing out on a whole range of other trips where there is also high demand because quite simply, we aren’t looking because we don’t realise we should be.
With your (and sadly other men before you) sweeping generalisation that “as the majority of women stay at home looking after children” I can’t tell whether you mistakenly truly belive that or are trying to be funny. It must be immensly frustrating as a women to have to hear and/or read this so frequently.
If someone has 2 children and looks after them without returning to work before they go to nursery or school you’re looking at approx 5-7years of childcare time. What do you think they did before, or will do after that interval? What about whilst looking after them; shopping, GP appointments, visting relatives, exclusively staying at home pining for their other halves return?
Seems like an awful lot of travelling is involved with a childcare role despite current modelling not identifying it and if it did I agree with you that it wouldn’t classify it as ‘work’. As I think John Bull mentioned on twitter, one of the reasons American Suburbia is so dull and boring, is that the male planners couldn’t understand what women would do all day beyond taking kids to school and home making. I hope you haven’t fallen into the same trap.
Finally given 5-7yrs is a small percentage of an adult working lifetime, and how many women are currently in employment whilst continuing their other ‘non-working’ roles (such as childcare), data collection and methodology needs to be modernised so transport planners can adapt to changing passenger demands given the ongoing changes in commuting patterns.
@ Crossrail Man
Do you have statistical evidence for this?
I doubt that in this day and age “the majority” of women are “stay at home mums”. Even for those women who do take a career break, it is not going to be for as much as half their working life.
On the public transport I use there are at least as many women as men. I would guess more men than women drive to (or for) work.
And if more men than women do use public transport, is that because women don’t need it, or because it is not designed and planned with the typical woman’s travel needs in mind?
@ Crossrail Man
You remind me of the boss of one of the major supermarkets who around a decade ago was still referring to his shoppers as ‘housewives’. Fortunately he and others have moved on. You haven’t.
Just to reinforce what Snowy says, there are approximately 45m people of conventional working age in the uk, and current employment levels are running around 35-36m. so even if, on the stupid assumption that all males are fully employed and females are the slack variable, that means there are at least 10m females working and not looking after their families full time. The reality is, of course, quite different. I know of virtually no families of working age, whether mine or anyone else’s, where the only breadwinner s the husband.
Chaining is a growing issue as increasingly, families find it difficult to find a school (let alone several schools) within walking distance. The current transport models – I have in in mind especially the disgraceful TRICS model beloved by developers and unthinking planning authorities – do not recognise the phenomenon at all.
But then I fear we shall soon have a British version of Kinde Kuche, Kirche [autosnip]
@Graham H
“Chaining is a growing issue as increasingly, families find it difficult to find a school (let alone several schools) within walking distance. ”
Even when it is, chaining may still be necessary. Both my children’s primary school and the station were within walking distance from home, but in opposite directions. This effectively tripled the distance I had to go in the mornings before I could actually get on a train, necessitating the use of the car if I was to get to work in a reasonable time as the only bus was unreliable and only covered half the school/station distance anyway.
(For the record I do have a Y chromosome)
Just to add to all this anecdata, it appears to me that, below the age of 11, children are not expected to travel alone to school these days. The cut-off when I was young was more like 7 years old.
It depends how far from school they live. My daughters friend walks alone at 9, but then he lives just around the corner. My daughter would have to cross Godstone Road and Brighton Road. Not happening until she’s at least 11!
There ought to be a law
Under section 508A of the Education Act 1996 local authorities must promote the use of sustainable travel and transport for all children and young people of compulsory school age who travel to receive education in the local authority’s area.
For children aged over 5 but under the age of 8 the statutory walking distance is 2 miles.
For children aged over the age of 8 and under 16 the statutory walking distance is 3 miles.
Usage of motorised transport could eventually require a disability permit for school hours.
“And Thou, Urbanus, dweller in the sordid city” to quote EE Nesbitt’s Phoenix. Here in not very deeply rural Surrey, the primary and secondary schools for our area are located in my village with catchment areas that extend at least 5 miles in two directions – a 5miles that is connected to our village only a cobweb of narrow unlit, pavementless, busless lanes(or in two cases, via a lengthy unlit footpath that crosses a barren heath and woodland for 3 miles). In one direction, that dangerous cobweb starts within 2 feet of the school gate. No parent in their right minds would let their children walk those lanes, or even walk them themselves. There really is no alternative to some form of motorised conveyance.
@Graham H: It’s rather ironic that the use of a mechanical contraption is required due to mechanical contraptions…
@SHLR 🙂 Irony is a declining thing+ these days, I fear. Everyone is so serious.
+ If I was clever, I’d invent a suitable term for that specific figure of speech, but my Greek doesn’t extend that far…
“For children aged over the age of 8 and under 16 the statutory walking distance is 3 miles.”
Does anyone seriously expect an eight-year old to walk three miles to school, and three miles back, in all weathers? Even at secondary age, seeing the amount of kit they have to carry back and forth, three miles is a long way.
Ars Technica reports on studies that demonstrate test performance depends on gender and ambient temperature.
FYI
Caroline Criado Perez will be speaking at the Greenwich Book festival on Thursday, 13th June
And a YouTube video of her in conversation (Long – it says 1h 15mins ) can be viewed …
HERE
And then there’s sexism in the trainspotting community…
Caroline Criado Perez’s book this week won the Royal Society Science Books Prize.
@GH
What’s Catch 22 in Greek?
@Nameless – Wish I knew! It would be useful addition to the vocabulary…
@Graham H: αλιευμάτων 22…
@SHLR – so the figure of speech might be slieumatonosis, or slieumatony?