Thread by @sneha_vakharia

The AAP Govt. in Delhi has promised to give free bus and metro rides for women. The said objective is to make public transport safer for women.

At best, this is bad policy. By artificially boosting the solution you do not solve the problem.

Thread:

Girija Borker, an economist, set out to answer a completely separate question:

Even though women perform better than men in national examinations, men go to better colleges in Delhi. Why?

What she found was this:

Women were going to inferior colleges when they were closer and safer to go to. They were willing to endure a significant drop in college quality so that transport to and from college was safer.

Women were willing to LOSE OUT on future income in the interest of safety.
Women were willing to PAY HIGHER FARES to be safe.
Women were willing to take longer routes if they were safer.

Affordability, therefore, is CATEGORICALLY NOT the limiting factor. Safety is.

You can read her research here: voxdev.org/topic/health-e…

Nutshell: The problem is participation and the solution is safety.

If the government wanted to increase women's participation in the work force, the most meaningful and effective way to do it would be by making public transport safer.

But here, they're saying that by artificially increasing participation they'll solve for safety. By boosting the solution, they'll solve the problem. This is like saying that by losing weight, they'll go to the gym!

HELLO. correlation is not causation! This is terrible science.

Finally, Aatishi has posted on Facebook that Phase 3 metro has a capacity of 40L and only 25L is being used, therefore this is unlikely to cause overcrowding. Here, her numbers are grossly misleading.

If you want to evaluate crowding you do not look at average or total occupancy. You look at occupancy during hours of peak traffic, which usually runs at >100%.

(Ofc off-peak hours bring down the average).

This policy will certainly impact peak hour crowding.

Summary: The adverse impact is being understated, and the positive overstated.

The most efficient way to increase public safety for women is to increase public safety for women!`

(Borker has some nice solutions. Go read.)