Public Transit's Gender Imbalance

In the United States women 'chain-trip' much more frequently than men do, and these extended patterns of use are often lost in current data collection methods. "When both partners in a marriage work, women are twice as likely as men to trip-chain a child care task during their commute, and when the couple has a child under five, the amount of trip-chaining - and thus transport burden on women - increases."

Eric Jaffe explains that "once a transit system knows that 'care' trips make up a sizable proportion of daily travel, it can improve its facilities to accommodate these users - replacing stairs with ramps, widening aisles or gates, and raising platforms to train level, for instance, to aid women with strollers and bags. A recognition of the practice of trip-chaining can help designers plan system extensions of transit lines into areas high in care-related sites, like schools and parks. Systems can also conduct what the researchers call "gender audits" to evaluate their ability to meet the transport needs of female riders."