Thousands of people have asked Transport for London to introduce a change on the Underground that is already in place in other countries. Tokyo and Mexico City have both already introduced the measure to keep women safe on public transport.
Around 12,000 people have already signed a petition calling for women-only Tube carriages to be introduced on the London Underground. Camille, a 21-year-old student who grew up in London, started the petition because she feels that “public harassment of women on the London Underground is a growing issue.”
Her petition added: “TfL’s approach is failing – we always see it, we do say it, but it’s still not sorted. That’s why I’m calling for Sadiq Khan to introduce women-only carriages.”
She was spurred on by her own experiences and those of her fellow female friends on the London Underground.
Camille recounts being asked to spend the day with a man while on the Circle Line in a school uniform at 13 years old. She added: “It was not a rare occurrence for girls at my school to arrive in tears from having experienced or witnessed something traumatising on the Underground.”
Her petition calls on TfL to assign certain carriages as women-only, with clear signage in both trains and platforms to direct women to dedicated spaces. This has already been seen in other cities across the world.
In Tokyo, women-only train carriages are available during rush hours. These are also open to boys of elementary school age and younger, and disabled passengers. Mexico City, which struggles with gender-based violence, also introduced women-only metro carriages in 2002.
Reported sexual offences have risen year on year by more than 10% on Tubes, trains and buses across the capital, as per the BBC. A 2023 survey by the British Transport Police suggested that over a third of women have been a victim of sexual harassment or offences while commuting by train or Tube.
Despite this, Transport for London has stated that it does not believe segregating travellers by gender on the Underground is the solution.
Siwan Hayward, TfL’s Director of Security, Policing and Enforcement, said: “Everyone should feel and be safe when travelling across the network, but isolating women is not the answer to tackling sexual offences.
“We do not support any proposal for female-only train carriages on TfL services, but instead are working closely with the police to ensure our capital’s transport network is a hostile place for offenders, including the use of intelligence-led policing operations to target offenders and hotspot locations.
“Women and girls should feel able to come forward and report any incident, confident that they will be taken seriously and that action will be taken.
“That’s why we have been working with the British Transport Police over many years to raise awareness of this issue, to help customers feel more empowered to report this behaviour.
“While we anticipated and welcome increased reporting, any incidence of sexual harassment is utterly unacceptable and we are working hard to stamp it out on our network.
“We encourage anyone who experiences or witnesses this behaviour to report it to the police or a member of staff, so that we can take action”
AloJapan.com