National Academies Press: OpenBook

Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers (2006)

Chapter: Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning

« Previous: Women s Issues in Highway Safety: Summary of the Literature
Page 51
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 51
Page 52
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 52
Page 53
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 53
Page 54
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 54
Page 55
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 55
Page 56
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 56
Page 57
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 57
Page 58
Suggested Citation:"Women s Issues in Transportation: Policy and Planning." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2006. Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23274.
×
Page 58

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

51 Women’s Issues in Transportation Policy and Planning Michael D. Meyer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Trip-making behavior is influenced by a variety offactors, including the demographic characteristicsand lifestyle choices of the traveler as well as fac- tors associated with the transportation system itself. Many papers presented at this conference have reported on different aspects of these explanatory variables. The papers in the plenary session on policy and planning focus instead on choices made by society in the form of public policy, which can also strongly influence trip behavior, including such things as the availability of alternative modes of transportation, how transport choices are priced, the availability of lifestyle support services such as daycare centers, the manner in which communities develop, and how tax structures influence one kind of behavior over another. Three specific questions define the types of issues to be examined in this session: • What are the implications of women’s trip behav- ior for planning practice? • What are the implications of women’s transporta- tion issues for policy? • What has been international experience with respect to women’s travel? The topic of public policy and planning is so broad and encompasses so many issues that it is difficult to establish boundaries around what should be included and, perhaps more important, to know how not to cover topics that are discussed elsewhere in the conference. In some ways, all of the other sessions and papers in this conference could be placed under the broad umbrella of policy and planning because they all relate in one fashion or another to policy and planning methods and to estab- lishing the analysis context for policy recommendations. The purpose of this overview is to set the context for the papers presented in the policy and planning session of the conference by establishing a conceptual frame- work for planning and policy development, which is used to describe current understandings and potential research needs. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR POLICY AND PLANNING IMPLICATIONS OF WOMEN’S TRAVEL BEHAVIOR Given the breadth of issues that could be related to the policy and planning implications of women’s travel, it is first useful to establish a framework of how such issues can be framed in a broader context. Figure 1 shows such a framework adopted by Meyer and Miller (1). Any planning process begins with collecting data and infor- mation on the problems being faced, a step characterized in Figure 1 as understanding the issues. Much literature on women’s travel has focused on this particular aspect. This understanding of the issues feeds into a definition of a vision for the jurisdiction or community and the iden- tification of goals and objectives and performance mea- sures. Each of these components of a planning process is critical for establishing a particular issue on the agenda of decision makers and those who influence policy mak- ing and planning. The next major component of the conceptual frame- work is analysis, which includes not only the tools and

methods that are used to determine the consequences of alternative courses of action but also the data sources that are necessary as input into these methods. Analysis leads into the evaluation process, which synthesizes the analysis results and produces an assessment of which actions are better than others. In many cases, this assess- ment can include quantifiable metrics indicating how one alternative compares with another (e.g., benefit–cost analysis), whereas in other cases the assessment could be subjective. The information produced by the evaluation process feeds into the development of the many products of the planning process, including the adoption of policies. It is important to understand that the products of the process illustrated in Figure 1 can range from project recommen- dations to policies to additional studies. Thus, for women’s transportation issues, progress in addressing such issues will likely occur in a variety of forms, cer- tainly by incorporating women’s issues into proposed projects and services (2–6), but also by considering out- reach efforts, policies, and additional studies that might promote women’s issues in the decision-making process. Although the conceptual framework up to this point could describe the planning of almost any topic, the next steps are very much related to the transportation public sector. According to federal law, every urbanized area over 50,000 population and every state must have a transportation plan, as well as produce a programming document that outlines the transportation priorities over the next 3 to 6 years. These documents are some of the most important products of the transportation planning process in that they indicate the direction in which a state or region is heading in its transportation program. The final step is monitoring system operations. By monitoring what is happening to transportation sys- tem performance, transportation officials can provide feedback into the transportation planning process so that future planning can focus on identified deficien- cies and gaps. Understanding the Issues Application of this framework to the issues of women’s transportation and travel behavior provides insights into research that has been undertaken in the past as well as future research needs. Much of the literature on women’s transportation and indeed most of the papers submitted to this conference have focused on this point of depar- ture for planning and policy (7–9; 10, pp. 75–85; 11–14). Most of this work has examined historical data on women’s travel characteristics in order to interpret travel patterns, challenges, and behavior. Dittmar (15), however, expanded the definition of “understanding the issues” by examining the impacts of federal transporta- tion legislation on women’s travel and concluded that the most important legislative issues that might affect women’s travel patterns included welfare reform, school choice, capital project emphasis, insufficient attention to social issues, travel needs of female immigrants, trends in pupil transportation, and the level to which women par- ticipate in transportation planning. He suggested that there were important issues in planning methodology as well, including activity-based travel demand modeling and better understanding of suburban travel patterns and behavior. 52 RESEARCH ON WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION Environmental quality Prosperity Social equity/ quality of life Vision Goals andobjectives Performancemeasures Implementation of strategies TIP Alternative improvement strategies Data Analysis methods Other sources for project ideas System operations Policies Operations strategies Infrastructure projects Studies Regulations Education and awareness Financing strategies Partnerships Collaborative undertakings Leads to…. Plan Evaluation Understanding the Issues FIGURE 1 Conceptual framework for policy and planning implications of women’s transportation issues [from Meyer and Miller (1)].

What are the important women-related transporta- tion issues identified by these and other authors? In gen- eral terms, they include the following: • Activity- and temporally oriented analysis that often misses key factors related to women’s transporta- tion issues. Much of transportation planning focuses on peak-period travel issues, which are primarily concerned with commuter trip making. Certainly, with many women in the labor force, any efforts to provide improved travel for these types of trips and during these periods would be beneficial. However, noncommute trips made during nonpeak periods (e.g., childcare- related trips) often do not receive an equivalent level of attention but are very important aspects of women’s travel behavior. • The importance of family roles and responsibilities as they relate to transportation needs and desires. Although women’s role in Western societies has changed dramatically over the past several decades, women still play an important role in child rearing and household management. The travel needs in support of this role have not received much attention by researchers. • Aging and women’s travel needs. The population of many countries in the Western world is aging at a rate that is increasing the average age to significant levels. Given the life expectancy of men versus women, women make up a much larger share of this elder population than men, and this trend will likely continue in the fore- seeable future. The changes in travel behavior for women who have been used to a different type of trip making in their earlier years could be one of the most important transportation challenges facing Western societies in the future. • Cultural differences and women’s travel opportu- nities. Much of the research that has occurred on women’s transportation has focused on trip making in Western societies and has not looked closely at how cul- tural influences affect the challenges being faced by women in non-Western countries, or for that matter by women who have immigrated to Western societies. As is seen in papers presented at this conference, such differ- ences can be dramatic. Although the historical data research has been instru- mental in furthering the understanding of these issues, the real challenge facing the understanding of women’s transportation is not necessarily a projection of past trends but rather an increased understanding of the dynamics of future population demographics and the potential impact of technology (and other behavior- forming influences). For example, one could speculate that the following societal trends could have a funda- mentally different influence on women’s transportation than what has been seen in the past: • Household mix and structure will continue to be different from what was true in the 1970s and 1980s. • Women (and men) will live (and work) longer. • Women, in general, will have higher incomes, but the gap between the higher- and lower-income house- holds will continue to widen. • As has occurred over the past 4 decades, much of the population growth will be in metropolitan areas. However, there will still be a significant number of (espe- cially older) people living in rural areas (this trend might be particularly important for women, who tend to out- live their spouses). • Society will continue to enjoy increasing levels of cultural diversity, leading to transportation challenges on how to provide mobility in acceptable ways to the many different groups now found in a typical metropol- itan area. • Unlike 50 years ago, when men were the predomi- nant users of the automobile, generations of young women have grown up with driver’s licenses. Thus, as women get older, their most familiar form of mobility will be the automobile. • Societal concerns with environmental quality will continue to grow, especially among women. • Technology will become even more prevalent for leisure and entertainment and for satisfying more of the everyday needs. Such technology could become a substi- tute for many travel needs experienced by women. • Women will increasingly gain in political power, becoming more influential in determining policies and making decisions that relate directly not only to trans- portation but also to such issues as daycare, health pro- vision, quality education, and environmental quality, which are affected by, and affect, the transportation system. The foregoing list is speculative, although many of these trends are already being seen today. The research challenge is to examine these trends (and many others not listed here) and determine what impact, if any, they will have on women’s transportation. Another important concern arises when the current state of research on understanding women’s transporta- tion issues is examined. Almost all of the literature, and again most of the papers at this conference, have focused on the “what?” of women’s travel behavior. What has been left out is the “why?” It is known with some level of certainty how women travel, the trip purposes associ- ated with this travel, and the socioeconomic context of women travelers. What is left unclear is the “why?” of this travel. Why do women exhibit different travel pat- terns than men? Why are women seemingly more con- cerned about safety and personal security as they relate to trip making? Why are women not as involved in trans- portation decision making as their male counterparts? 53WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION

These are just some of the questions that could be well served by research. This brief overview of the initial step in the planning framework leads to the following research questions and needs: • What do we know (and not know) about women’s transportation issues and their defining parameters? • What future societal trends might strongly influ- ence women’s transportation? What are the likely impli- cations of these trends? • How should one account for the effects of space, income, immigrant status, and so on, on women’s trans- portation? • Why do women exhibit the travel behavior they do? What are the key factors that influence women’s travel decisions? • For what is known, how should this knowledge affect societal policies and goals? • For what is not known, what types of information and data collection are necessary to improve under- standing? Vision, Goals and Objectives, and Performance Measures The early steps in the planning process provide the founda- tion for many of the planning steps that follow. Not only do the vision and goals and objectives provide a statement of what is desired for a community but the public process of developing them provides an important opportunity to inform and educate the community on the key issues that could become of greater concern in the future. Although visions and goals and objectives are often community- specific, one often finds commonality among jurisdictions in the statements relating to desired transportation and related system performance. For example, goals are often found in many transportation plans relating to the following issues: • Safety, • Mobility, • Community design, • Quality of life, • Security, • Sustainability, • Aging, • Social inclusion, • Environmental pollution, • Public health, • Housing, and • Equity. Visions and goals and objectives are not usually so detailed that one would find stated distinctions on how they are defined or interpreted for men or women. Usu- ally, for example, a goal statement would be simply “We want a safe transportation system.” However, one can certainly speculate that each of the foregoing goal areas could have very different implications for women as compared with men. Safety might mean one thing for men (road safety, speed-related crashes, or both) and another for women (personal safety and in-vehicle child restraints). Mobility for men might very well mean ease of travel to work, whereas for women it might mean ease of travel to work as well as travel for family care reasons. Each of the goal areas has important trans- portation and social consequences, which might result in very different implications for men as compared with women, and vice versa. The literature covering these issues is quite sparse. In fact, a paper presented at this conference is one of the few examinations of efforts to incorporate gender into visions and goals and objectives. Vagland (16) reports on the results of a recent transportation policy statement in Sweden that recognizes the need for equality and equity in national transportation policy making. As reported by Vagland, the Swedish policy states that “the transport system shall be designed so that it meets both men’s and women’s transport requirements” and that “women and men shall have the same opportunities to influence the construction, design, and management of the transport system, and their values shall be given equal weight.” This is one of the few examples where women’s trans- portation issues have been explicitly considered in a vision and goals statement. Performance measures are a relatively new addition to the transportation planning process. These measures or indicators provide a status report on how well the transportation system is performing at any particular point in time or, if desired, how well the system has per- formed over time. They are potentially very influential in that they focus on a limited number of issues that are of particular interest to decision makers. The professional interest in performance measures has expanded in recent years. A review of one of the most complete listings of such measures, however, reveals that of the approximately 600 measures that had been identi- fied in practice, all were defined generically, with little attempt to attach gender to any (17). Thus, for example, generic mobility and accessibility measures are used in many metropolitan areas, as are measures relating to transit ridership, road congestion, air quality, and so on. These measures generally do not target specific groups (with an important exception being low-income house- holds) and therefore do not monitor how the transporta- tion system is performing with respect to other important trip-making groups, such as women. The research needs that relate to this step in the plan- ning process include the following: 54 RESEARCH ON WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION

• Which goals or policy arenas are most related to women’s transportation issues? Do existing typical goals and objectives provide sufficient focus on such issues? • Where appropriate, how should women’s trans- portation and societal issues be incorporated into a com- munity’s visions and goals and objectives? Are there sufficiently important issues relating to women’s trans- portation that they deserve more targeted attention in this part of the planning process? • For those women’s transportation issues that are found to be most important, how can they be repre- sented in performance measures? How do such issues or performance measures overlap with the performance measures commonly found in transportation planning? Data Analysis and Evaluation Data analysis and evaluation are steps in the planning process most commonly found in the literature. Data, of course, are critical to the analysis of any policy topic. Many papers at previous conferences on women’s trans- portation issues (and many of the papers submitted at this conference) focused on the analysis of data associ- ated with women’s travel as well as on the limitations of these data. In general, these papers concluded that there are not enough good quality data on women’s travel pat- terns and behavior; that the definition and interpretation of some of the data inputs and results are unclear as they relate to women’s transportation issues; that biases are often introduced into data collection by the way data are sampled and categorized, which limits their usefulness in interpreting what is being learned regarding women’s transportation; and, as noted earlier, that limited data are available concerning the why of women’s travel decisions. Analysis and evaluation tools serve as the core of the investigative part of the planning process. These tools provide the information that is necessary for decision makers to understand the likely consequences of each action under consideration as well as the relative worth of one action versus another. Although important work is being done in the environmental justice community, most current approaches to analysis, evaluation, and presentation of information to decision makers seldom examine the distributional (or equity) impacts of plans, strategies, or investment actions, not only for women but also for other underrepresented groups. In many ways, doing so is a key precursor to making policies and plans more sensitive to women’s transportation issues. President Clinton’s Executive Order on Environmental Justice showed some level of response by the planning community in understanding the distributional impacts of proposed investments on low-income and minority households. Even here, however, the amount of progress has been limited. What will happen in the near future for data analysis and evaluation as it relates to women’s travel issues reflects observations with regard to travel modeling in general, but also captures thoughts on how deficiencies identified in this and previous conferences might now be handled given advances in modeling and data collection technologies. The following observations and predic- tions are perhaps a bit optimistic, but they do relate to plausible directions for improving analysis and evalua- tion as they relate to women’s travel issues. Continued Linkage of Transportation Policy with Other Societal Goals and Issues Transportation policy will continue to be linked to other societal goals and issues (e.g., public health). One of the important characteristics of transportation policy over the past 50 years has been the policy linkage between transportation investment and its desired impact on other societal goals. For exam- ple, transportation policy is often linked to economic development, economic productivity, international com- petitiveness, environmental quality, quality of life, and, most recently, public health. These linkages are not likely to diminish in the future and if anything could become even stronger. The important question is, how does the transportation influence on other societal activities affect different population groups? For example, a national welfare-to-work policy should have a transportation component that provides the opportunity for welfare recipients to reach jobs, but this transportation compo- nent could be different for men than for women, where the latter might also have responsibilities (requiring transportation support) for children and other family members. Activity-Based Travel Modeling Activity-based model- ing will provide the means by which women’s travel behavior can be more effectively incorporated into travel demand models. Historically, demand modeling has focused on the trip, usually categorized by trip purpose, as the major unit of analysis and thus model output. This focus has resulted in a disconnect between what actually happens during a trip versus how a network model would represent that trip. A trip from home to a school (to drop off children) to a coffee shop to work would be modeled as three different trips: one home-to-other (or school) trip, one non-home-based-to-other trip, and one non-home-based-to-work trip. In reality, the different destinations for this home-to-work trip are really part of one trip, linked in terms of the activity undertaken by this traveler. The most recent progress in demand model- ing attempts to account for the traveler’s activity and the need for transportation as part of this behavior, thus resulting in activity-based modeling. With women’s daily activities often different from men’s, a more realistic, activity-based approach for representing trip making will 55WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION

allow the model to capture women’s travel behavior much better than has been done in the past. Better Spatial Location Technologies Better spatial location technologies in combination with data collec- tion methods will provide a major leap in the under- standing of travel behavior. One of the important limitations of past data collection efforts has been an inability to identify easily where travel behavior was occurring on a transportation network or, in some cases, who was the actual traveler. Thus, for example, in- vehicle data collection devices that monitor vehicle speed, acceleration, and other characteristics of the vehi- cle’s performance would often not identify where the activity occurred or who was driving. Transit riders, walkers, and bicyclists were often undercounted and their travel patterns not understood because of data col- lection limitations. With the Global Positioning System (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS), trans- portation planners can collect a much more robust set of data that provides much more information on what is happening, how it is happening, and where it is happen- ing. This development is important for women’s travel analysis because the weakest part of transportation data collection efforts was often on phenomena such as walk- ing and riding transit, which were very important to women’s travel. Better Mode Analysis Models Models will do a better job of analyzing different transportation modes. Similar in nature to the previous point, that data collection for some modes of transportation is not as good as for oth- ers, the ability of analysis tools to model adequately the different modes of transportation is a key point of depar- ture for understanding travel behavior. In particular, improvements to the modeling of nonmotorized trips and transit trips will be important for women’s travel analysis. Better Small-Scale Models Better models and tools will be available for planning and analysis at smaller scales (e.g., neighborhoods). The nature of most current net- work models is that they aggregate model inputs and outputs at such a high level that any ability to identify impacts at a smaller scale is lost. An example is the inability of most models to analyze walk trips internal to a traffic analysis zone. In many residential communities, such trips constitute a very large proportion of trip mak- ing. Developing models and analysis tools that provide a better assessment of this level of travel and of the impacts of different strategies will be an important improvement to the profession’s analysis capability. Better Understanding of Urban Design–Urban Travel Relationship The impact of community development and urban design policies on urban travel (and vice versa) will become better known and incorporated into community decision making. Many papers at this con- ference examine the important relationship between how communities are structured and the resulting influence on people’s ability to move around. This is an important relationship, which has been examined by several researchers for many years. With women’s transporta- tion issues, because many of the nonwork trips in a com- munity are made by women, urban design and community development patterns become a significant determinant of the quality of life they experience. The more spread-out different activities are, and especially those relating to child rearing, the more time parents (women, in particular) will spend transporting children to these locations. Many communities have begun to adopt different approaches toward urban design that better reflect the desire of community residents to spend more time enjoying activities rather than traveling to them. This action will likely continue, if not expand, in future years. Consequences All these predictions have important consequences on how planning and policy analysis is conducted and, in particular, how women’s issues are incorporated into this analysis: • What is the current status of data as they reflect women’s transportation issues? What is missing? • What are the deficiencies in data collection strate- gies and methods with respect to understanding women’s travel issues? • How do state-of-the-practice models and analysis methods treat gender-related travel phenomena? What improvements are needed? • Are evaluation methods and techniques (which are often general, e.g., benefit–cost analysis) sensitive enough to differences among travelers? • Do commonly used evaluation criteria distinguish between impacts on different population groups, in par- ticular, on women? If not, is this an important issue? If so, what criteria provide the best evaluation informa- tion? Outputs of Planning Process As shown in Figure 1, the planning process can produce many important outputs. These products, along with the eventual implementation of specific actions and strategies, are the ultimate outcome of the steps that have preceded them. Thus, for example, plans, pro- 56 RESEARCH ON WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION

grams, projects, education strategies, additional studies, finance, and partnerships can all be possible outcomes of planning efforts. The important questions for this conference are, to what extent is women’s transporta- tion even recognized as an issue in these products? And to what extent are specific actions proposed for dealing with this issue? One of the important issues relating to the planning results that lead to new or changed policies is the impor- tance of scale. For example, the level of analysis and tools needed to understand the implications of national tax policy on women’s transportation issues would be very different than those needed to examine a city’s tran- sit policy and its influence on women’s travel decisions. To some extent this is the same issue mentioned earlier in the discussion of the desirability for tools that could operate at smaller scales of analysis. However, the analy- sis of policies and their impacts will likely require a flex- ible research framework that reflects the availability of data and the types of analysis models that are needed. Research needs for planning outputs and outcomes include the following: • From a retrospective perspective: –What have been the policies most affected by, and those most affecting, women’s transportation issues? –To what extent have women’s transportation issues been found in the products of the planning process and of policy development? • In looking toward the future: –What are the implications of changing gender demographics in a range of policy areas? –What are the implications for transportation poli- cies? –What are the best ways of integrating women’s transportation issues more into planning and policy analysis processes? • What are the supporting roles that transportation policies can play in meeting other societal goals impor- tant to women? Finally, though not shown explicitly in Figure 1, the typical transportation planning process as practiced in the United States provides many opportunities for public involvement throughout the process. Thus, the issues associated with women’s transportation could be better understood given the opportunities presented to the pub- lic to participate in the planning process. By raising women’s transportation as an issue early in the planning process, the steps that follow will typically attempt to answer the questions that have been raised. Public involvement thus becomes an important opportunity to include in transportation planning the many different aspects of women’s travel that are best addressed at the local or regional level. INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES National and cultural factors will likely have a significant effect on women’s roles in society and on women’s trans- portation issues (18, 19). This conference provided oppor- tunities for researchers and scholars from other countries to examine women’s transportation and to define some of the cultural differences that could explain women’s travel behavior. This topic has not received much attention in the literature, but it is one that is certainly important from a global perspective. There will be clear differences between developed and developing countries, and even within countries there will likely be differences between women living in urban areas and those who live in rural areas. The availability of transportation for the women of the world relates not only to their economic welfare and social well- being but also to public health. Some of the more interesting research questions on this topic include the following: • How are women’s travel needs and desires shaped by national and cultural factors? • What has been the experience in other countries in developing national or regional transportation strategies that enhance women’s mobility? • How does transportation policy tie into other gov- ernment policies (e.g., public health, economic develop- ment, education) and what has been shown to be most effective? • How can the successful experience with women’s mobility strategies in one country be transferred to others? What impediments exist to this transfer of experience? SUMMARY Some planning and policy issues associated with women’s transportation and travel behavior research have been examined. In each component of the planning process, as well as for the international aspects of such issues, research questions were proposed. The intent here was not to prepare an exhaustive list of such questions, but rather to establish a sense of what still needs to be examined in order to improve women’s mobility. Some of these questions were examined in the papers delivered at this conference. Others were not and have not received much attention in the literature. The challenge for the research community is not only producing a better understanding of women’s trans- portation issues but also supporting the development of policies, plans, and actions that will ultimately enhance women’s mobility. The success of such research is thus ultimately achieved when those in positions of decision making and influence understand the issues and act upon them. The research results reported at this conference 57WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION

can go a long way toward providing the knowledge base for such action. REFERENCES 1. Meyer, M., and E. Miller. Urban Transportation Plan- ning: A Decision-Oriented Approach. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001. 2. Georgiadou, F., K. Branch, and M. Silbernagel. Trip Reduction Incentives: Gender Differences and Policy Implications. In Women’s Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL-97- 024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1996. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap40.pdf. 3. Rosenbloom, S., and E. Burns. Gender Differences in Commuter Travel in Tucson: Implications for Travel Demand Management Programs. In Transportation Research Record 1404, TRB, National Research Coun- cil, Washington, D.C., 1993, pp. 82–90. 4. Rosenbloom, S., and E. Burns. Why Working Women Drive Alone: Implications for Travel Reduction Programs. In Transportation Research Record 1459, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1994, pp. 39–45. 5. Bianco, M., and C. Lawson. Trip-Chaining, Childcare, and Personal Safety: Critical Issues in Women’s Travel Behavior. In Women’s Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL-97- 024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1996. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap8.pdf. 6. Mokhtarian, P., M. Bagley, and L. Hulse. The Influence of Gender and Occupation on Individual Perceptions of Telecommuting. In Women’s Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL- 97-024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1996. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap37.pdf. 7. Guiliano, G. Public Transportation and the Travel Needs of Women. Traffic Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4, 1979, pp. 607–616. 8. Blumen, O. Gender Differences in the Journey to Work. Urban Geography, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1994, pp. 223–245. 9. Hanson, S., and I. Johnston. Gender Differences in Work-Trip Length: Explanations and Implications. Urban Geography, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1985, pp. 193–219. 10. Wachs, M. Men, Women, and Urban Travel: The Persis- tence of Separate Spheres. In The Car and the City: The Automobile, The Built Environment, and Daily Urban Life (M. Wachs and M. Crawford, eds.), University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1991. 11. Taylor, B., and M. Mauch. Gender, Race, and Travel Behavior: An Analysis of Household-Serving Travel and Commuting in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Women’s Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL-97-024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1996. http://www.fhwa .dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap20.pdf. 12. Niemeier, D. Linking Social Context with Transporta- tion Planning and Funding, In Women’s Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL-97-024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1996. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/ womens/chap36.pdf. 13. Mokhtarian, P., and E. Raney. Behavioral Response to Congestion: Identifying Patterns and Socioeconomic Differences in Adoption. In Women’s Travel Issues: Pro- ceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL-97-024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Trans- portation, 1996. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/ chap38.pdf. 14. McGuckin, N., and E. Murakami. Examining Trip- Chaining Behavior: Comparison of Travel by Men and Women. In Examining Trip-Chaining Behavior: A Com- parison of Men and Women. Oak Ridge National Lab- oratory; FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1999. http://npts.ornl.gov/npts/1995/Doc/Chain2.pdf. 15. Dittmar, H. From Wooing Soccer Moms to Demonizing Welfare Mothers: A Legislative and Policy Context for Women’s Travel. In Women’s Travel Issues: Proceedings from the Second National Conference, Publ. FHWA-PL- 97-024, FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1996. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap35.pdf. 16. Vagland, A. Gender Equality as a Subsidiary Objective of Swedish Transport Policy. In Conference Proceedings 35: Research on Women’s Issues in Transportation, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 2005, Vol. 2, pp. 189–195. 17. Cambridge Systematics, Inc. NCHRP Report 446: A Guidebook for Performance-Based Transportation Planning. TRB, National Research Council, Washing- ton, D.C., 2000. 18. Suchorzewski, W. Transportation Perspectives Consid- ering Both Men’s and Women’s Preferences. www.city shelter.org/13_mobil/26tend.htm. Accessed Feb. 6, 2005. 19. Polk. M. The Influence of Gender on Daily Car Use and Willingness to Reduce Car Use in Sweden. Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2004, pp. 185–195. 58 RESEARCH ON WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION

Next: APPENDIX A: Conference Committee Biographical Information »
Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers Get This Book
×
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

TRB's Conference Proceedings 35, Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers contains the conference summary, the four peer-reviewed overview papers presented by the topic leaders, and a list of conference participants from a November 18-20, 2004, conference held in Chicago, Illinois. The conference was designed to identify and explore additional research and data needed to inform transportation policy decisions that address women's mobility, safety, and security needs and to encourage research by young researchers. Volume 2 contains 22 full papers from the breakout and poster sessions and 9 abstracts of papers on subjects of particular interest to the committee that were selected for publication through the committee's peer review process.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!