Transportation
Will Women Ever Feel Completely Safe on Mass Transit?
Cities trying to boost ridership have a few options, but lots of room for improvement.
Somewhere in a major American city, every Saturday night, a woman tells her friends that she's about to leave a party. Alone. Whether she's going to take the subway, or head to the bus stop, or simply walk, if it's after midnight a fellow partygoer will almost always pull out a phone and say, "No, no. Let me call you a cab."
Her friends are genuinely concerned for her safety, and often that concern is warranted. But it's also a sign that certain classes of city dwellers — the ones who can afford iPhones and the occasional cab ride — simply accept that public spaces, especially at night, are places where women can't expect to feel safe.