Bus Stops & Perceived Safety Through a Gender Lens

Bus stops & perceived safety through a gender lens Daytime vs. Nighttime Differences in Feelings of Safety Along MBTA Bus Route 1

user Grecia White

Figure 1: Survey recruitment poster hung at a bus stop along Massachusetts Ave in Boston

Bus Stops and Perceived Safety Through a Gender Lens takes a microscale approach and focuses on bus stops along a single route in Boston to better understand safety perceptions at different times of day through a gender lens. A survey was conducted using an SMS platform, SlickText, to conduct the perceived safety audit. I hung up large posters with the project and survey details at 33 out of the 46 bus stops along the route (Figure 1). Participants were asked how safe they felt waiting for the bus at a specific bus stop during the daytime vs nighttime and whether they identified as a woman or a man. The 118 survey responses were cleaned and analyzed using Excel and R, a free programming software (Figure 2). As shown in Figure 3, the perceived safety scores were coupled with Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) amenities data to identify any patterns between the amenities available at each stop and the safety scores given by people. Since publication, I have met with a Cambridge, Massachusetts planner interested in learning more about the project and findings. This person also proposed the idea of pairing the survey data with land use data. After publication, I was also invited to speak at the 2021 Modernizing Rail conference, where I presented to transit advocates and enthusiasts. Here the topic of land use was again mentioned as another possible factor influencing safety perceptions. Most recently, I’ve been invited to present at a Boston Region MPO Transit Working Group meeting. All this leads me to think there is interest in adding a gender lens to transit research, in order to better understand the experience of different riders. Future work could include analyzing land use data and evaluating its influence on safety perceptions versus the influence of amenities at bus stops. At the same time I was conducting this research, I was also working on a personal project, a documentary focused on women who bike

Figure 2: Safety Feeling Score Scale -- Only includes data from bus stops that received 3 or more responses for daytime or 3 or more responses for nighttime from folks who identify as a woman.

at night. As part of this effort, I met and interviewed people about their experiences. This led to patterns emerging that would have otherwise not been brought to my attention had I only sent out a survey. Future studies aimed at improving the transit experiences of various groups of people, including women, could include the collection of qualitative data, such as interviews, to complement quantitative data. Insights from interviews could lead to a more complex, but fuller and clearer understanding of people’s struggles and joys as they move through their cities.

Explore for yourself!

See what physical amenities are present at each stop along MBTA bus route 1 in the northbound direction as well as the daytime and nighttime safety scores for folks who identified as women (Figure 2). Visit to the full interactive map at https://bit.ly/bus_stops_perceived_safety_map to access the southbound stops, southbound amenities and the safety scores for non women identifying folks. Visit https://bit.ly/bus_stops_perceived_safety_report to see the author’s completed report, created using ArcGIS Story Maps.

Figure 3: MBTA Route 1 bus stops, PATI amenities and average daytime and nighttime perceived safety scores. Sources: City of Boston, City of Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Esri Canada, Esri, HERE, Garmin

About the Author

Grecia White

Grecia White is interested in using data + media to improve the delivery of government services in order to better serve the needs of all citizens and foster trust and engagement. She considers herself to be a transportation scholar activist and hopes to bring visibility to the issues women and minorities face as they move around their cities. Grecia completed her Master’s degree in Urban Informatics in August 2021 from Northeastern University.