A study of 330 women in Delhi shows that sexual harassment in public transport is not only an individual safety concern. It is changing how women use the city: when they travel, which routes they take and whether they choose the metro, a bus or another mode of transport. That makes public transport safety a question of access to the city itself.
The findings were reported in a research paper published in July in The Oriental Anthropologist. The paper, titled “The Effects of Sexual Harassment in Public Transit Spaces on Travel Behavior and Well-Being of Young Women: Experiences from Delhi City, India”, was written by researchers including Banaras Hindu University scholars Atal Dwivedi and Ruhi Rawat, Doon University researcher Aniruddh Kumar Yadav and others.
The research included a survey of 330 women and detailed interviews with 20 women aged between 18 and 45. According to the study, 38.78% of survey participants said they had personally experienced sexual harassment in public transport. Another 30.30% said they had witnessed such an incident involving another woman. The findings indicate that the impact extends beyond the immediate incident: women also alter their travel behaviour to reduce exposure to risk or fear.
This distinction is important for understanding how a city is used. A transport system may be technically available, but access is not equal if some passengers must avoid particular routes, travel only at certain times or select a more expensive or less convenient mode. The supplied study does not quantify the economic cost of these changes or establish how many women stopped making particular journeys altogether. It does, however, document a direct relationship between harassment, fear and altered travel decisions among the women surveyed.
The timing of reported incidents is one of the study’s significant findings. The research recorded 142 incidents in the evening, followed by 96 at night, 86 in the afternoon and 64 in the morning. The figures suggest that perceived safety is closely connected to the time of travel, especially during the hours when commuters may be returning from work, education or other activities. The study material does not provide the total travel volume for each time period, so these figures should not be read as a rate of risk for every journey. They do show that evening incidents formed the largest reported group in the research.
The locations identified by respondents span the entire public transport chain. The metro accounted for 54.39% of reported experiences, while buses accounted for 51.75%. Walking journeys accounted for 42.11%, and bus stops or metro stations for 41.23%. These categories indicate that safety concerns are not confined to vehicles. Stations, stops, approaches and pedestrian connections are also part of the travel environment in which women assess risk.
The types of behaviour reported further show why a narrow focus on physical assault would miss a substantial part of the problem. Wrongful touching was reported by 64.91% of respondents, while 64.04% reported persistent staring. Following was reported by 44.74%, remarks or catcalls by 40.35% and attempts to initiate conversation by 39.47%. Obscene gestures were reported by 24.56%, covert watching by 21.05% and demands for sexual relations by 13.16%.
These figures are presented as the proportions reported in the study and do not necessarily represent mutually exclusive groups. A respondent could have experienced more than one form of harassment or more than one incident. The range of behaviours nevertheless illustrates how routine and less visibly violent acts can influence mobility. A woman who changes a route because of persistent staring or following may be responding to a sustained sense of exposure even when no formal complaint or physical assault is recorded.
The research also links these experiences to mental well-being. Among women who experienced harassment, 30.70% reported stress and anxiety, while 20.18% said their confidence had declined. The source report does not establish a clinical diagnosis or provide a comparison group of women who did not experience harassment. Its contribution is instead to record the connection described by participants between unsafe travel experiences and their sense of well-being.
For transport planning, the implication is that a journey cannot be evaluated only by the speed, capacity or geographic coverage of a service. The quality of access also depends on what happens inside a train or bus, at the point of entry, and on the route to and from a station or stop. A system that moves large numbers of passengers but leaves some users routinely modifying their behaviour is producing an uneven mobility outcome.
The study’s findings also expose the limits of treating women-only compartments or reserved spaces as a complete response. The supplied report does not evaluate the effectiveness of any specific existing safety measure, so no conclusion can be drawn from it about which intervention works best. However, the reported locations include vehicles as well as stations, stops and walking routes. That distribution points to a safety challenge spread across the whole journey rather than one confined to a single carriage.
The researchers recommend increasing the number of buses and metro trains during crowded periods, strengthening CCTV coverage and deploying police or marshals in isolated areas, at bus stops and in underpasses. They also call for clearer accountability within the law-and-order system and community awareness programmes aimed at changing men’s behaviour.
Each recommendation relates to a different institutional responsibility. Increasing service frequency is primarily a question of transport operations and capacity. CCTV, policing and marshals involve coordination between transport agencies and law-enforcement authorities, as well as decisions about monitoring and response. Accountability depends on how complaints are received, recorded and acted upon. Community programmes address social behaviour, which cannot be resolved through infrastructure alone.
The institutional challenge is therefore one of coordination. Delhi’s public transport network is experienced as a single journey by passengers, but its components may be managed by different agencies and operators. A woman travelling by metro may use a footpath, an interchange, a station entrance, a train, a bus connection and another pedestrian route. A gap in safety at any one point can influence the decision to make that journey again.
The study does not provide a citywide incident database, a comparison across transport systems or a measure of how travel behaviour changed over time. It also does not establish whether the women surveyed are statistically representative of all women who use public transport in Delhi. Those limits matter when interpreting the findings. The results should be understood as evidence of reported experiences and their effects among the surveyed participants, rather than as a complete estimate of the prevalence of harassment across the city.
Even with those limitations, the evidence raises a structural question for Delhi’s mobility system: who bears the cost when public transport is unsafe? The immediate burden falls on women who change their departure times, routes or transport modes. The wider effect may be reduced access to employment, education, public services and social life, although the supplied study does not quantify those outcomes. What it demonstrates is the mechanism through which exclusion can occur: a journey remains available in theory but becomes more difficult, stressful or undesirable in practice.
The findings also suggest that capacity and safety cannot be treated as entirely separate planning concerns. Crowding may affect how passengers experience harassment, while poor frequency can reduce the flexibility to avoid a particular service. At the same time, additional buses or trains alone cannot address incidents at stops, stations, underpasses or along walking routes. The study’s recommendations therefore combine operational measures, surveillance, visible enforcement and social intervention.
For policymakers, the next step is not simply to count vehicles or expand routes. It is to assess whether women can use those services across different times of day and along the full length of a journey. That requires better attention to where incidents are reported, how complaints are handled and whether safety responses are visible and trusted. The supplied research does not measure these administrative processes, leaving them as an important area for further evidence.
The central finding is clear: harassment and the fear of harassment are influencing travel behaviour among the women included in the Delhi study. The issue reaches beyond personal discomfort to the functioning of public transport as an urban service. The study confirms the need to examine safety inside vehicles and across the surrounding public realm, while further research and official data will be needed to determine the scale of the problem and the effectiveness of specific interventions.