Segregation of sexes in transport has never worked, otherwise we’d already have a consistent, long-term services for women. All they exist for is to extinguish sentiment when people are more fed-up or when the problem is openly worse. They ultimately stop challenges to the institutional sexism in transport by pretty much as Alara Rogers suggests–by empowering women a little bit through lousy choices and burdening them even more for the results.

That’s why this sort of thing is bad.

We can’t just create “ladies’ cabs” and pretend we’ve solved the problem, but we also can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Unless we determine that the existence of these cabs and buses actually hinders the progress of societal change, we need to do everything we can to keep women safe while we address the big problems.

I mean, the end result is *exactly* the same, but by thinking about it differently, you end up with not “the default is the train where men harass women, and women are special flowers that need their own train”, but “the default is only women are allowed on trains because men are assholes, and men need their own special trains because they can’t be trusted.”

Then, of course, men object to being restricted to their own special trains, and the burden of proof falls on men to prove that they are not assholes and will not create a nuisance to other passengers if they ride the train. Also, if the default is that men are restricted to specific trains, there will be a lot more equality in the system — women are not in charge of anything, so if women get their own special service it will be inferior. But give men their own special service that they have to use, and because men are in charge of everything, even *though* they are getting their own special service they are forced to use as a punishment for being assholes, they will still ensure that they get at least half the available transports… but the default is still that men are forbidden to ride trains unless they’re special trains that allow men, and since that’s the default, at least half the available transport will fall into the default and be available to women only.

It puts the burden back on men. Not “women are special snowflakes who deserve extra care”, but “men are antisocial assholes who create problems for other passengers”, and force men to prove they’re not.

Also, taxicab drivers who are male should be required to have a recording running in their vehicle to make sure they don’t harass female passengers.

I just find it so outrageous that time and time again, the fact that men prey on women is used to restrict *women*. Hello, we are humans, we kill or contain predators — we don’t hide from the human-eating tiger, we go out in the bush with our guns and kill it. Why is the fact that men prey on women not used to restrict *male* behavior? Yes, it’s totally unfair to pick on people because they share a gender with rapists, but it’s also totally unfair to pick on people because they share a gender with *victims*, and given that victims don’t cause bad things to happen and rapists do, if you have to penalize one group or the other, doesn’t it make more sense to penalize the group that contains the rapists rather than the group that contains the victims?

I’m particularly struck by the concern expressed by maggie. Right now, there are not enough buses, so most of the women still take the non segregated buses. But if there are enough, there is a high probability that any women who steps on a non-segregated bus will be harassed. We need an end to institutional sexism, not stop gap methods.

(putting aside that I’m a man, but who still likes safe public transport, since it’s a public good in economic parland)

It’s that these ideas never work. There is a typical initial burst of enthusiasm, then the programs languish in the morass of lack of funding and derision and then a new initiative is created for the problem that the society in general doesn’t have a true interest in solving. The issues involving women only passenger cars in Japan somewhat informs my opinion. In the end, what really happened is that the institutional sexism was reinforced (as with the aforementioned pink and the chikans found other places for harrassment. Meanwhile the women’s only service only happen during very specific times with not the greatest service during those operating times. It’s very expensive and inefficient to do a true parallel service for women.

In general, these problems and solutions have been around as long as passenger rail has been around.

While the train cars are a good temporary solution, the taxi service makes me angry – harrassment on public transport is mostly coming from other passengers; harrassment in a taxi is coming from an employee of the taxi company. Why the hell do we need segregated taxis rather than a zero-tolerance program for taxi drivers?