Gender In Public Transportation

Introduction

“Where public transportation goes, the community grows” Public transit benefits riders and non-riders economically (Jerpi, n.d.), environmentally and physically (American Public Transportation Association, n.d.). Public transportation has been considered as one of the factors that determines the quality of the city by some people. Moreover, San Francisco ranked the top three city has the highest public transit ridership in 2007 (Christie, 2007).Then, how about college students living in a city with a high public transit ridership? Are they also a part of the ridership population? Do they use the car more than public transit? How about gender? Does gender really matter? Caren Levy, a lecturer of the University of London, stated that the gender affects the use of public transit, and men are using the public transit more than

According to the data analysis, 24 % of college students are using public transit (BART, bus, Muni light rail, shuttle, Caltrain) as modes of a commute. Out of five different public transit, bus ranked the top public transit used by students by 39% and BART followed by 28 %, then Muni by 24% of total usage. More males in the survey chose Bart to commute than females while more females chose the bus, Caltrain, muni, and shuttle than males. In total, 46.7% of males and 50.7 % of females were using public transit in SF State (Figure 1 & 2). Mode of commute except public transit was a bike, carpool, drive alone (carsolo), on campus (livesfsu), motorcycle, and walks. 53.4 % of males and 49.3% of females chose transportations other than mass transit. For males, drive alone had the highest usage and walking ranked second. On the other hand, females were vice versa. They walked the most and drive alone ranked as the second highest mode (Figure 3 & 4). For both genders, the bus was the largest mode choice, then drive alone, walk, and BART follows by a decrease in percentage (Figure 5 &