About me
Closing Gender Gaps in Transportation; Examining The Role of Bike-Friendly Urban Design
According to Ivan Illich, bikes are "tools of conviviality." Their beneficial aspects—greater accessibility compared to cars, improving energy efficiency in the transportation system, and affordability— can contribute to their positive social impacts. One of the social issues in transportation is women’s barriers in reaching their desired destination, including issues with safety and security, finding affordable means of travel, and the transportation system’s adaptivity to their caregiving roles. Therefore, finding strategies for facilitating women’s access to primary services and expanding their travel domain should be prioritized.
Even though biking incentivizes active transportation and, based on United Nations SDG5, supports gender equality, historical records suggest a paradox: “Bikes were initially read as a tool for reinforcing patriarchy”. Thus, in this research, we are going to answer the question of whether a bike-friendly design approach can help overcome women’s travel barriers and promote gender-inclusive cities or whether more factors should be considered.
The literature review covers transportation equity and gender gaps in transportation, followed by debates on the effectiveness of bike-friendly design in addressing women's mobility barriers. The research then provides comparative case studies between two U.S. cities (Davis and Portland) and a Middle Eastern city, Tehran, Iran. These case studies are reliant on secondary data sourced from available reports and statistics.
Collectively, the study gives a clearer vision of how infrastructure quality and cultural norms impact the effectiveness of bike-friendly design in reducing gender disparities in transportation. Not only does it provide a clearer understanding of the causal relationships between enhanced biking infrastructure and mobility gaps, but it also highlights other influential factors, such as cultural norms and stereotypical views of gender and policies, in the effectiveness of this strategy.
