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Good practice Imported

Viajemos Seguras — Mexico City's Gender-Responsive Transit Budget and Women-Only Car Programme

Mexico · Mexico City · See the Mexico profile · See the Mexico City profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 43% 74/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Mexico City ring-fenced transit-safety budget for women-only bus and metro cars and support centres, after data showed 9 in 10 women had faced transit violence. A quasi-experimental study found an 11-point drop in sexual-violence probability, but a rise in non-sexual violence.

11+ percentage points
Drop in probability of reported sexual violence during women-only car hours (2017 study)
9 in 10 share of women
Women who had experienced violence while using public transport (pre-programme baseline data)
Viajemos Seguras — Mexico City's Gender-Responsive Transit Budget and Women-Only Car Programme

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Mexico City Finance Secretariat & Mexico City Women's Institute (Inmujeres CDMX)
Period
2008–present
Keywords
public transport, public finance, gender-based violence prevention

Context

Mexico City began embedding a gender perspective across its municipal budget in 2007, coordinated by the city's Finance Secretariat together with the Mexico City Women's Institute (Inmujeres CDMX) and civil-society partners.

Activities

Within that framework the city introduced Viajemos Seguras ('Let's Travel Safely'), restricting some metro and bus cars to women and children during peak hours, after data showed that nine in ten women in Mexico City had experienced violence while using public transport. Between 2015 and 2017 the effort was reinforced under the UN Women/AECID-funded 'Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces for Women and Girls' programme, which added three support centres in the metro and metrobús network, better lighting at stops, and the 'Vive Segura' mobile app for incident reporting and neighbourhood safety audits.

Results

An independent quasi-experimental study (Soto Villagrán et al., 2017), using a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design around the daily cut-off times when the women-only cars operate, found that the probability of a woman reporting sexual violence fell by more than 11 percentage points during protected hours. The same study found an unintended rise in non-sexual physical violence during the same hours, a trade-off the evaluators flagged for future programme design.

Conclusions

The approach has since informed comparable Safe City programmes funded from local budgets in Puebla and Torreón.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Coordinated by Mexico City's Finance Secretariat together with the Mexico City Women's Institute (Inmujeres CDMX) and civil-society partners, 2015-2017 expansion funded by UN Women/AECID under the 'Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces for Women and Girls' programme

Conditions for success

  • Embedded within a wider gender-responsive municipal budgeting framework since 2007
  • Added support centres, better lighting and a mobile reporting app (Vive Segura) alongside the women-only cars

Common failure modes

  • The fuzzy regression-discontinuity evaluation found an unintended rise in non-sexual physical violence during the same protected hours, a trade-off flagged for future programme design

Where it fits

Governance type
city government (Finance Secretariat + Women's Institute), with UN Women/AECID donor support
Scale
city-wide (Mexico City transit network)

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Data sources

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