Sarah Ann Louise Rozon

Women in the United Kingdom (UK) experience a dual burden of remunerated employment and other-focused care activities, which complexifies female travel patterns. However, transport networks in the UK are optimized for male-normative commuting patterns, thus underserving female users. As a result, women are rapidly shifting from public to private transport use to meet their distinct mobility needs as it becomes financially accessible.This shift is reflective ofa wider societal dependence on privatevehicle use,which is a more emissions-intensive mobility pathway than public transport.

The objective of this dissertation is to identify opportunities to optimise the UK public transportnetwork forfemaleusersas a mechanism to incentivise public transportuse and disrupt the shift of women towards private vehicles. To accomplish this, UK transport professionals wereconsulted regarding three gaps identified intheliterature: planning processes, professional gender representation, and network organisation. Aqualitative web survey was used to establish the current state of gender mainstreamingin transport, and semi-structured interviews were employed to identifyopportunities to improve genderoutcomesinUK transportnetworks.

Survey data indicate that gender mainstreamingtools are insufficientlyused in public transport planning, and interviewees pointed to the further integration and standardisation of existing tools as a critical step to improvethe visibility of gendered concerns in transport planning. Survey results indicate that professionalgender representationis unequalin the transport sector, and that this disparityinfluencesproject outcomes. Interviewees indicatedthat improved hiringpracticesand education mandatescan improve gender representation in the sector. Finally, as it pertains to network organisation, survey results indicate that the current network and future planning alike prioritisecommuting over other trip types, and professionals pointed to improving network connectivityand station infrastructure as opportunities to optimisethe network for non-commuting trips.Due to the small sample sizeof this research, the results of this dissertation are not generalisableto all UK public transport professionals. Future work may consist of increasing the research sample size to improve the generalisability and subsequent applicability of these results.