Safety

Safety concerns pose barriers to free and independent mobility

Safety concerns also affect how people travel. For many women, the fear of victimization continues to be a major concern when they make travel decisions. Female transit users are fearful of transit environments, prompting them to adjust travel behavior to avoid certain routes and modes. Previous work has examined how transit environments influence women’s safety. Surveys of U.S. transit operators showed that most agencies did not address the distinct safety and security needs of women. These surveys also highlighted the mismatch between women’s safety concerns and transit design. Previous research highlights a number of key strategies for improving safety and crime prevention through environmental design principles. Rather than focusing on security, environments can be designed to include lighting, avoid dark, desolate corners, and have stations and stops interact with the surrounding street. Safety issues, however, are not exclusively women’s concerns. Therefore strategies to address safety must consider intersectional approaches where the solutions do not make some people feel less safe, namely strategies that include armed law enforcement officers.

Safety goes beyond aspects of personal safety and extends to safety from traffic and collisions. In Los Angeles, sociodemographic factors, urban form, and land use influence the risk of pedestrian-automobile collisions. Studies of areas with a high frequency of pedestrian collisions have shown that areas with narrow sidewalks and multiple driveways are more prone to collisions than others. Further, Black people in L.A. are disproportionately killed and severely injured in traffic collisions across all modes of transportation. One in four fatal victims of a traffic collision in the City of Los Angeles was a Latino/a or Black pedestrian. These studies have led to a range of policy recommendations: conducting annual safety audits at areas of high pedestrian collisions, prioritizing communities most in need for safety improvement funds, and recognizing a variety of resident needs when working to improve pedestrian infrastructure.

Safety

Safety concerns pose barriers to free and independent mobility

Further Reading from UCLA Scholars