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Op-Ed: The Bus as a Safety Infrastructure: A Gender Lens on Phnom Penh’s Transport Future
- Apr 11
- 6 min read
IPF
Future Forum's junior research fellow, Top Viphallin was published in CambojaNews on April 11th, 2026. Check out the original article HERE, and read it below!
Women in Phnom Penh face persistent safety challenges on public transport, particularly those working in garment factories, who constitute the city’s largest group of female commuters. Many women also travel with young children to schools or care centers, highlighting the dual need for safety and reliability. Drawing on the Women and the City survey and the AIIB Gender Action Plan, improving city bus operations through extended hours, higher frequency, safety infrastructure, and accountability systems offers an immediate, scalable opportunity to make public transport safer for both women and children.
While private vehicles can limit exposure to unsafe actors, public transit can be safer when appropriate safeguards are in place, such as well-lit stops, safe waiting zones, trained staff, and reporting mechanisms. Moreover, robust gender-responsive transit brings broader benefits: reduced traffic congestion, lower air pollution, improved road safety, and equitable access to work and caregiving responsibilities.
Positioning the city bus as a gender-responsive public good requires collaboration between the municipal government, transit authorities, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, and civil society. Piloting reforms, monitoring outcomes, and scaling successful interventions can institutionalize safety while addressing social inequities. In this way, safer, more reliable public transport becomes not just a mobility solution but also a long-term social equity strategy that benefits women, caregivers, and low-income communities.
Policy Issue and Empirical Evidence:
Phnom Penh’s ambition to become a truly inclusive and safe city must reckon with a stark reality: women and caregivers often travel in fear. According to a Women and the City survey by ActionAid, 22% of women in Phnom Penh reported having experienced sexual or physical harassment in public places, including streets and transport routes. Similarly, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) Gender Action Plan underscores that 89% of respondents feel unsafe working or studying at night, and 24% feel unsafe in public spaces at any time. These findings reflect not mere discomfort but point to structural barriers in how mobility is organized, policed, and governed.
Why Focus on the City Bus System
Unlike informal transport options, the public bus network offers a regulated, visible, and institutionally managed mode of travel, which makes it uniquely suited for gender-sensitive reform. Fixed routes, scheduled service, and centralized management enable safety to be actively enforced. By contrast, tuk-tuks, motorcycles, or private ride-hail services lack accountability, standardization, and the capacity for scalable safety interventions.
When properly managed, buses can serve as “safe spaces” within the city, shared public spaces where harassment is deterred by visibility, infrastructure, and collective norms.
Key Arguments and Implementation Process:
Longer Service Hours for Night-Time Safety
A significant portion of female workers in Phnom Penh finish shifts after 7:00 PM. When buses stop early, women are forced into vulnerable travel environments. Extending operations until midnight (12 am) on the most-used corridors would directly lower exposure to street harassment and unsafe rides.
Targeting the busiest corridors in Phnom Penh with data on employment centers, ridership peaks, and land use could maximize impact, particularly as a high proportion of female workers finish after 7:00 PM. These extended hours would also align with broader inclusion goals by expanding access to evening job markets and community activities.
According to the “Night Shift” Project (University of Melbourne), 12:00 AM bus operations are a “vital lifeline” for essential workers (healthcare, cleaning, hospitality) who are often ignored by 9-to-5 transit planning.
Several Phnom Penh corridors experience heavy evening ridership, including the Line 01 route from north to southeast and vice versa, which starts at Prek Pnov, travels south along Monivong Boulevard (National Highway 1), passes Chbar Ampov Market, and ends at Boeung Chhouk Terminal. This line is considered one of the busiest, as it links Phnom Penh city center to Chbar Ampov. Additionally, the routes 02, 03, 4A & 4B, and 05 serve markets, retail, cafes, offices, nightlife, and hospitality, with peak hours between 7 PM and 12 AM, highlighting the need for extended, safe, and frequent bus service.
These mentioned routes can serve as a successful practice for further pilot projects to improve the Phnom Penh city bus operation.
Higher Bus Frequency to Eliminate Risky Waiting Periods
Evidence from Bogotá’s TransMilenio system shows that increasing bus frequency during off-peak and late-night hours reduces the “exposure time” at stations, where 80% of harassment incidents occur. A World Bank study found that when headways were reduced from 30 to 10 minutes, perceived insecurity among female commuters fell by 35 %, with reported harassment cases declining proportionally.
Increasing the frequency of Phnom Penh’s most congested routes to 10–12-minute intervals would reduce idle time and limit exposure, especially where lighting and visibility are currently inadequate. Frequent service also improves predictability, making it less likely that women will plan travel based on safety concerns rather than convenience or economic opportunity.
Driver Accountability Screens
By prominently placing QR codes on buses and at stops, Phnom Penh can generate real data on driver behavior, harassment, and safety risks, creating performance metrics that transcend anecdote and strengthen organizational culture toward accountability and care.
Purposing Safe Waiting Zones at Bus Stops
Urban design research consistently shows that improved public environment features enhance both real and perceived safety. Targeting the 40–50 busiest stops where women frequently wait alone would yield high returns because physical context strongly influences safety. Adding staff presence or community stewards during peak hours further enhances these effects by providing supervision and rapid response capability, thereby reinforcing both perception and reality of safety in the transit experience.
Institutions That Must Drive the Change
Phnom Penh Capital Hall (PPCH) provides overarching leadership by embedding gender priorities into transport policy, financing safety improvements, coordinating institutions, and monitoring performance indicators. The Phnom Penh City Bus Authority translates these policies into practice through service planning, staff deployment, data collection, and enforcement of safety and accessibility standards. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) ensures technical rigor by auditing systems, setting inclusion guidelines, and evaluating whether mobility policies effectively reduce risks and barriers for women and vulnerable groups.
The Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MPWT) establishes regulatory frameworks, infrastructure standards, and compliance mechanisms governing operators and facilities. District authorities operationalize improvements locally through lighting, sidewalks, crossings, and safety coordination. Civil society actors such as ActionAid, Future Forum, and women’s networks provide oversight, community feedback, and public engagement, ensuring lived experiences shape decision-making and institutional accountability.
With unified effort, Phnom Penh can become a model of gender-responsive mobility that is safe, inclusive, and empowering, where every citizen moves freely, confidently, and equally through the city.
Counterargument and Cost
It is true that extending operations or increasing bus fleets requires financial investment. Critics may highlight budget constraints or argue that private transport is sufficient. But the social costs of inaction are higher: missed economic opportunities, gender-based violence, and limited participation in public life. Many interventions, such as improving lighting, deploying reporting technology, and training staff, are relatively low-cost but yield high returns in terms of safety and trust.
Moreover, investments in gender-responsive mobility align with broader development goals, including social equity, public safety, inclusive healthcare, and urban sustainability.
The Dakar BRT project in Senegal has served as a powerful catalyst for gender equity, driving a remarkable surge in women’s workforce participation from 6% to 43%. This shift was underpinned by a robust security framework, including integrated CCTV, police patrols, and public awareness initiatives, which successfully suppressed the crime rate to just 3.51 incidents per 1 million passengers. Similarly, in Mozambique, World Bank-backed infrastructure projects are prioritizing the development of feeder roads and innovative accessibility pilots, ensuring that remote populations gain reliable connectivity to essential healthcare and social services.
Parting Message
Reforming Phnom Penh’s bus system is more than a transport policy; it is a statement about whose mobility matters. By embedding gender sensitivity into public transit, the city affirms that women and caregivers deserve not only to move but also to belong, safely and with dignity.
In short, a city that supports safe, reliable, and accessible bus travel also supports gender equity. Phnom Penh has the opportunity to lead not just in infrastructure but also in building a more caring, inclusive urban future.
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