Measuring women’s perceived safety in paratransit: a composite index approach for gender-inclusive urban mobility in Lahore

Women’s perceived safety in paratransit remains an insistent, so far unexplored dimension in rapidly urbanizing cities of the developing countries. Therefore, this study evaluates the determinants of reported harassment of women in paratransit systems in Lahore. It also offers a Women’s Transport Safety Index (WTSI) to assess the perceived safety of women using paratransit modes. The data were collected from females who use paratransit through convenience sampling. Exploratory factor analysis, binomial logistic regression, and the construction of a composite WTSI based on polychoric principal component analysis. Findings indicate that harassments while traveling in paratransit depend on women’s socio-economic position, trip purpose, time of travel, and experience of tolerant harassment environments rather than being incidental. Housewives, low-income women, shopping-related trips, driver-perpetrated harassment, and experience of witnessing harassment significantly increase the victimization risk, although co-travel and stronger perceived personal safety lessen vulnerability. The WTSI highlights robust construct validity, internal consistency, and predictive power in explaining harassment outcomes, showing the coexistence of frequent micro-aggressions and severe but less frequent risks. It emphasizes the necessity for gender-responsive transport governance, regulation of paratransit operations, and context-sensitive safety interventions to foster equitable and sustainable urban mobility.