An evening with friends. A late shift. A train after visiting family. The journey home is part of everyday life, and women's safety on public transport deserves attention throughout that journey.
A new British survey raises a question for the people who plan and run transport: do they have the knowledge and backing to act? For Spher, that question belongs alongside the conversations about connection, community and support. Women deserve to move through everyday life with freedom, and the work of making that possible is shared.
What the new transport survey found
On 28 September 2026, Women in Transport published findings from 737 transport professionals. Among respondents, 74% reported receiving no training or guidance on women's and girls' safety; only 8% felt very confident identifying ways to improve it. These are participating professionals' responses, not a survey of passengers or a measure of violence. Women in Transport, 28 September 2026.
The distinction matters. These results cannot tell us how safe an individual journey is, and they should not be presented as Swedish statistics. The full linked review could not be retrieved during this article's preparation, so its detailed sampling methods and representativeness remain unverified.
What the findings offer is a starting point for a practical conversation. Recognising a concern and having the support to address it are different things. Training, clear responsibilities and time to follow through deserve a place in that conversation.
A separate picture from passengers
Passenger experiences come from different research. A Department for Transport study, published on 26 February 2026, surveyed 4,904 adults in Great Britain using a probability-based panel. Fieldwork took place in March and April 2025. NatCen reports that 54% of female public transport users aged 18 to 34 had experienced sexual harassment or unwanted behaviours that left them upset, distressed or threatened in the preceding 12 months. This combines several experiences; it is not a rate of confirmed sexual assaults. NatCen: Personal safety on transport, Department for Transport publication.
The two studies ask different questions, of different groups, at different times. They should not be combined into one statistic or used to claim that a lack of training caused the experiences passengers reported.
The journey includes the spaces between
When we talk about public transport, it is easy to picture the bus or train itself. For this discussion, the journey also includes the walk to the stop, the wait, the interchange and the route away from the station.
A useful question for planners and operators is how responsibility connects across those spaces. Who handles a concern at an interchange? How does a passenger reach a member of staff? What happens after an experience is reported?
These are questions for organisations to answer. They should not become another set of tasks for women to manage before meeting a friend or returning from work.
Women's experiences deserve a place in decisions
Listening should lead somewhere. In Spher's view, involving women in transport decisions means creating room for different experiences and explaining what changes as a result.
It also means asking who is missing from the conversation. A student, a night-shift worker and a woman travelling with a mobility aid may have different needs. A thoughtful process makes space for those differences rather than treating one woman's experience as everyone's.
Transparent follow-up matters, too. Communities deserve to understand who owns the work, what is being prioritised and how progress will be assessed. A promise of attention becomes more useful when it comes with a clear next step.
Where community and Spher fit
There is room for everyday connection alongside public responsibility. At Spher, we care about women finding people to talk to, make plans with and stay connected to.
Spher's safety and community app brings together groups for women, live location sharing and SOS alerts to chosen contacts. Sharing is controlled by the user. Alert delivery depends on permissions, connectivity and recipient availability; Spher is not an emergency service and cannot guarantee a response.
Those tools can offer a way to stay connected. They do not replace the work of transport organisations, public authorities or emergency services, and using an app should never be treated as a condition of deserving support.
The journey home should leave room for ordinary things: a conversation, a plan for tomorrow, a moment to yourself. Women's freedom to travel deserves care from the people and institutions around them.
Sources and editorial approach
Sources checked on 2 October 2026. Prepared with AI assistance and approved for publication under the Assi Spher editorial byline. The cover is an AI-generated illustration, not a photograph of research participants. Read Spher’s editorial policy.