Women's mobility via bus rapid transit: Experiential patterns and challenges in Lahore

Highlights

• Lack of gender-disaggregated data is a major issue towards addressing mass urban mobility needs of women in Pakistan.

• Paratransit and walking facilities for women are needed to be upgraded, particularly in buffer of 5 km from BRT stations.

• Harassment is a major concern both at stations and in buses. Younger users are relatively more affected.

• Elderly women’s mobility via BRT needs more focus in the system.

• Gendered-equality strategies at policy level are critical to ensure safe and efficient women’s urban mobility.

Abstract

Background

Women in developing countries experience greater restrictions in mass urban mobility. UN's Sustainability Development Goals for 2030 recommend safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable public transportation, particularly for the vulnerable groups. Pakistan experiences rapid urbanization trends and considerably low ranking worldwide for gender equality. In addition, socio-cultural norms, higher dependency on public transport, lack of gender-responsive mass transportation, and harassment experiences limit women to explore potential growth opportunities.

Objectives

Since limited evidence exists on the subject, this study aims to investigate typical mobility attributes of women users of Pakistan's first bus rapid transit (BRT) in Lahore, explore the challenges they face, and recommend measures for improved urban mobility.

Methods

Primary data include face-to-face interview-based questionnaire surveys along the BRT corridor to assess various quantitative and qualitative travel characteristics. Descriptive and cross-comparison statistical techniques were applied to obtain reliable results. Responses related to harassment were documented and evaluated. Graphical trends and pictorial evidences were also presented.

Results

Major segments of the study sample belonged to lower-income, relatively younger and middle age, students, employees and users with no or limited work. More prevalent modes to and from BRT stations were paratransit, including rickshaws and chingchis (motorbikes converted into rickshaws), followed by walking. Majority accessed BRT within 5 km, covered less than 15 km along 27 km BRT corridor, and traveled during daylight. Major challenges were harassment at stations and in buses (younger users being more affected), limited facilities for the elderly, lack of seating/waiting facilities near entrances/exits of BRT stations, limited dedicated space in buses and ticketing booths during rush hours.

Conclusion

The study highlights important typical mobility trends and difficulties of women while using Lahore BRT. Addressing women's mass urban mobility issues could improve their educational and economic prospects. Findings could be useful for transportation agencies and practitioners to incorporate gender-sensitive measures in future BRT systems, particularly in developing countries.

Introduction

Women in developing countries experience greater restrictions in mass urban mobility. Provision of safe, economical, accessible, and sustainable transport systems is signified under the UN's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, particularly for the vulnerable groups. (UN SDGs, 2015). Many cities around the world have been trying to solve their urban mobility issues with more mass transit systems, particularly bus rapid transit (BRT) – a dedicated route, high-speed bus system. Although case studies of BRT systems have shown several benefits such as reductions in travel time, air pollution, and accidents (Carrigan et al., 2013), the impacts on women-specific mobility attributes and challenges require further attention.

Women's urban mobility is particularly important for developing countries as these countries have limited resources, experience alarming rates of rapid urbanization, and exhibit significant gender inequality. Almost 90% of the world's urban population growth is expected to take place in developing countries till 2050, with fastest trends in South Asia and Africa (UN DESA, 2018). Pakistan is ranked third in the list of nine countries where more than 50% of this projected population increase is expected. In terms of gender gap, Pakistan has critically low global rankings across major international indices as shown in Table 1. Data of selected neighboring countries of Bangladesh and India are also included for comparison since these countries have relatively similar heterogeneous traffic and urban mobility problems. Global average scores are also provided for an overarching perspective.

It is estimated that if all countries could match the progress towards gender gap of their regional leader, it could add almost 11% in the annual global GDP in 2025 (equating to approximately US$12 trillion) (MGI, 2015). In Pakistan, nearly 26% of 55 million women are part of the labor force (age of 15–64 years), i.e. almost 36% of the entire country's population is left out as contributors to the economy (UNWP, 2016; Sarwar and Abbasi, 2013). Pakistan is ranked 147 out of 153 countries in terms of gender gap in labor force participation according to the latest World Economic Forum's data for 2020 (WEF, 2019). The gender ratio for literacy rates (female:male) is although somewhat better, still requires further improvement, i.e. 0.653 compared to the global average of 0.899. These economic and educational gaps for women could be reduced by incorporating gender-sensitive strategies in public transit systems, eventually increasing their contribution towards country's economy (WDD and UNWP, 2018; ADB, 2016a; UNWP, 2016; Chaudhary et al., 2012; Ali et al., 2011).

As far as the women's “challenges” related to mass transit usage are concerned, most critical are personal safety and harassment concerns, which are much higher than men (Mejía-Dorantes and Villagrán, 2020; Allen et al., 2018; Loukaitou-Sideris, 2016; ADB, 2013; Smith, 2008). An international review study found that harassment rates for women in public transport ranged from almost 15 to 95% with higher rates for emerging economies, most likely due to male dominating cultural and gender norms (Gekoski, 2017). Several studies have shown Latin American cities to be least safe for women traveling on public transport (Fontalvo et al., 2019; Allen et al., 2018; TRF, 2018; TRF, 2014). Similarly, several Asian and African cities have also shown higher rates of harassment experiences (Gautam et al., 2019; BRAC, 2018; TRF, 2018; WDD and UNWP, 2018; ADB, 2015; TRF, 2014; Asiyanbola, 2007). In Pakistan, women generally have to face challenges of safety, harassment, hindrance towards work and education, social reputation, poor accessibility, and limited dedicated space in buses and stations (Hoor-Ul-Ain, 2019; UNWAP, 2018; JICA, 2017; Sajjad et al., 2017; Naseem, 2015). Due to fear of harassment, females are influenced to reduce their use of public transportation or move to more private modes of transportation (Gallup Pakistan, 2017; ADB, 2015; GTZ Germany, 2005). Most critical factors to shift to costlier private modes by women were unwanted attention from males and feeling of unsafety in public transport, sometimes even compelling them to walk long distances (ADB, 2016b; ADB Asian Development Bank, 2014; IIED, 2015). In addition, some other important aspects related to harassment experiences in public transportation include: higher probability during rush hours (Ceccato and Paz, 2017; Natarajan, 2016; Madan and Nalla, 2015); more critical for students and younger aged users (Gautam et al., 2019; Tripathi, 2017; ADB Asian Development Bank, 2014); shift to private modes or not to travel altogether (Gautam et al., 2019; Allen et al., 2018; Tripathi, 2017; ADB Asian Development Bank, 2014); permanent impact on memories (Mejía-Dorantes and Villagrán, 2020); transfer of negative experience to the next generation (Allen et al., 2018).

In light of the aforementioned background, the aim of this study was to explore women's mobility patterns and challenges in Pakistan's first BRT in the megacity¹ of Lahore. The key objectives were to: (a) investigate mobility attributes for various demographics and their cross-comparisons, (b) investigate difficulties experienced during typical BRT trips, including harassment, and (c) suggest remedial measures based on findings to improve women's mass transit mobility.

The structure of the paper starts with the introduction including background and objectives, followed by an overview of the study area. The next section focuses on the materials and methods used, followed by results and discussion. Key conclusions are presented at the end along with limitations of the work and policy recommendations.