Making Transit More Family-Friendly

Transit agencies face a variety of challenges, particularly post-pandemic. For some riders, the lack of family-friendly features and amenities makes transit more difficult or impossible. As H. Jiahong Pan explains in Next City, “These agencies are slow to make changes to ensure women and families feel welcome on public transit, whether through policy, service or seating layout adjustments.”

While most transit planners view public transit through the lens of commuting, Investing in Place’s Jessica Meaney explains that “Other countries have really widened that perspective to look at how we get kids to school, how we get people to health care, how we get to the grocery store, how we get to the park, how we live our lives.” According to a 2019 report from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “women, who travel predominately for household chores, school or daycare, and often while caring for other people, bore the brunt of transportation costs and harassment yet received the least help.”

L.A. Metro has pledged to support families through its Gender Action Plan. “The plan calls for collecting data disaggregated by gender to understand how policy changes would affect people of different genders; building out restrooms with specific amenities; prioritizing household-serving entities such as grocery stores and childcare at transit stations, providing real-time arrival and bus crowding information; and following in Tri Delta Transit’s footsteps in redesigning buses’ seating layout to support riders who bring aboard unfolded strollers.”

Other agencies around the country are taking actions to make transit easier and safer for women, children, and other vulnerable users, changing stroller policies and making bus service more frequent during non-rush hours.