Article: Women drive up train, tram crush

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From the Melbourne Age click here!

Women drive up train, tram crush

Women drive up train, tram crush

    * Reid Sexton
    * November 16, 2008

MORE women than ever before are using public transport, with a study showing that female commuters make about 1 million more trips each week than men.

This surge in patronage indicates that women ? who use public transport to reach leisure activities as well as their places of work ? are behind the boom that has left the system buckling under record overcrowding.

World-first research commissioned by the Department of Transport shows the number of trips made on public transport each week by women grew from 2.4 million in 1991 to 3.9 million in 2006.

This translates to an increase in average weekly trips by women from 1.9 to 2.6, while the number for men remained at two.

The new report, A System of Time Accounts for Melbourne, also reveals that in 2006 women travelled 50 kilometres further and two hours longer each week than women who used public transport 15 years earlier.

Author Duncan Ironmonger said the research showed that the sustained influx of women onto the network had fuelled the boom in patronage.

Dr Ironmonger, a Melbourne University economist, said it was part of a broader picture that showed women spending on average as much time as men in transit.

"Both sexes now spend a bit over 8? hours travelling each week," he said.

"Women ? are now travelling for as long and almost as far as men."

A Transport Department spokesman said the significant rise in the number of women travellers was due to women working longer hours in recent years than they did in 1991.

But Dr Ironmonger said another contributor to the increase was the time women spent travelling to leisure activities. This, the report shows, leapt 1.54 hours to 2.88 hours ? a jump of 87%.

"That's quite a revelation," he said. "It shows women are travelling to their leisure activities like the gym and restaurants more ? than they were in 1991."

Monash University demographer Dharma Arunachalam said the increased travel times reflected the changing roles of women in society.

"I would think the catching up women did to 2006 reflects largely the increased participation of women in the labour force," he said.

"But women have also moved more and more into the professional area, which of course involves more commitment and more travel.

"So it reflects both the quantity and nature of the jobs. On the positive side it is the equality of the sexes ? on the other, women are suffering probably as much as men these days."