Today is International Women’s Day, and we suspect you have already seen a slew of posts praising women in the workplace and saying how important women are – today. So instead of doing that, we thought we would take a different tack and look at how mobility apps can help women feel safer on public transport and make it more accessible to them.

Back in the summer, we had a talented intern, Milla Semisch, who worked on a research paper for us, looking at ways that MaaS can be more inclusive to different groups of users – one of which was women. She found that 85% of women in the UK think about their safety when planning and making a journey.

There are ways that our mobility app already makes traveling on public transport safer and easier – for example, providing the rider with real-time information on arrival times to reduce waiting times at stations and bus stops, offering safe and easy to use first/last mile services, and integrations to services such as ELERTS See Say®, which allows riders to report real-time incidents such as crimes, damage to stations and other safety and security concerns directly through the app. In addition, push notifications and rider alerts about service changes mean that women know if they need to change their route or take alternative transport.

Having fare capping within our app also makes using public transit more viable for women. Sadly the reality is that women are still more often in charge of household and childcare duties in a family, so they have very different travel patterns from men. Their days may differ significantly, meaning traditional weekly or monthly bus passes might not be the best financially. They also make shorter but more trips in general, often ‘trip-chaining’ activities like dropping children off at school or other activities and running errands.

Summary

There are ways that our mobility app already makes travelling on public transport safer, more accessible and easier to plan.

  • Real-time rider information.
  • Rider alerts and push notifications about changes to services.
  • Safe and easy to use first/last-mile services
  • Integrations such as Elerts See Say® allow riders to report real-time incidents such as crimes, damage to stations and other safety and security concerns directly through the app.
  • Fare capping within our app also makes public transit more viable for women, as their days may differ significantly. Traditional weekly or monthly bus passes are not the best financially.

Read the full extract from the research report here.