Bianchi Dy bdy@mit.edu
When Girls Just Want To Have Fun, How Do They Go?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gregory Newmark, PhD gregory.newmark@morgan.edu
Gendered Differences in Night-time Leisure Travel in greater Boston
INTRODUCTION
who is going out for night-time leisure IN BOSTON?
Current literature often focuses on work and school travel, and neglects how people move through cities for leisure and recreation and recreation – both critical yet under-investigated factors for improving productivity, creativity, and quality of life. Night-time transit plays a critical role not only in providing access to jobs for various industries, but also in ensuring equitable and affordable access to leisure after work and school.
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n Boston, night-time transit used to be provided widely through the Boston Night Owl, but this service has been defunct since 2016 because of a mix of low driver supply, low demand and governance issues. Even now, there continue to be regular calls by citizens to bring back nighttime transit to meet the needs of not just work commuters, but also those out at night for recreation. More importantly, a lack of late-night public transport can preemptively choke/limit participation nightlife as certain demographic segments like students or low-income individuals plan their trips based on public transit availability and may find ride-hailing services expensive.
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his study examines gender differences in nighttime transit travel use for leisure activities within the Boston Metropolitan Area. We use the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s 2010-2011 Household Travel Survey to investigate quantitative differences in traveler demographics, mode preference, and activity types and duration in the Boston Metropolitan Area. Our definition of leisure refers to social visits, eating meals outside the home, and indoor/outdoor recreation. To quantify the complexity of leisure travel, we attach changes in transportation when accessing/egressing leisure to an anchor leisure activity and use this to compute mode preference. We find that women perform more social visits but spend less time on each one compared to men, and that night-time leisure travelers are likelier to use cars either as drivers (men) or passengers (women).
What leisure activities do boston residents pursue at night?
Compared to the population at large in the Boston Inner Core in 2010, night-time leisure travelers were likelier to be younger, female, identify as White, have higher educational credentials, belong to a household of 3 persons or more, and be employed and make above $75,000.
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Men
Women
ravelers were also likelier to own a transit pass and/or a valid driver’s license but were less likely to be an enrolled student.
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Interquartile range of activity durations by minutes
Share of recreational trips by trip count
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morgan State University
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here were more respondents identifying as White among nighttime leisure travelers, with a higher share of women than men. A higher proportion of Asian men and Black/ African American women were making trips for leisure reasons at night as compared to their counterparts, with close to twice as many Asian men as women. There were more male than female Hispanic respondents among nighttime leisure travelers. T
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WHY STUDY NIGHT-TIME TRAVEL
TO ACCESS/EXIT FROM LEISURE?
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any transit agencies in the US design their train and bus schedules based on normal work hours, as these periods are when the greatest number of people take public transit. Transit systems typically start up at 5AM, and then close around midnight. Trips taken outside of this pattern are often through cars , which only exacerbates the problem of equitable access to destinations for reasons such as work and leisure. As such, most people who wish to travel during late night/early morning period (between 12AM to 5AM) have few options other than cars, or non-motorized options like walking and biking which can be unpleasant in nighttime settings.
2 Leisure activity preference based on solo versus group travel
he most popular activity were meals outside the home, followed by indoor recreation/ entertainment. Women were likelier to access indoor recreation/ entertainment than men. Conversely, men were likelier to go out for outdoor recreation/ entertainment compared to women. The biggest gap was in visiting friends/family, with women making more trips than men compared to other leisure activities. T
All activity durations increased across genders for night-time leisure compared to the Inner Core sample for all activities other than indoor recreation/entertainment by at least 6 minutes.
he gap between genders was 11 minutes for social visits, with women spending less time on social visits than men. This activity also had the widest interquartile range of activity durations. T
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here is a clear link between equity and overnight transit service – it helps not only to increase access to jobs, opportunities and non-work activities for those from lower socioeconomic classes but also add to increase the vibrancy of nighttime economies. Night-time transit becomes even more important when we consider that there is a link between American cities’ economic growth and infrequent, irregular and exploratory activities – of which leisure is a primary component. These predictive activities account for only less than 2% of total visits but successfully explain more than 50% of variation in economic outcomes (Wang et al, 2024). T
Wang, S., Y. Zheng, G. Wang, T. Yabe, E. Moro, and A. ‘Sandy’ Pentland. Infrequent Activities Predict Economic Outcomes in Major American Cities. Nature Cities, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2024, pp. 305–314. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00051-7.
ABOUT THE STUDY AREA
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ifference bet
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ocial visits dropped in proportion when night-time leisure respondents traveled in groups.
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he largest discrepancy between solo and group travel were that when men traveled as part of groups, they participated in more outdoor recreation, and far less indoor recreation and social visits. The gap between solo vs group travel was smaller for women. T
Less than a third of either gender was enrolled in school or university, showing that many of the respondents were already in the workforce rather than completing their education.
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ore than 50% of night-time leisure travelers reported earnings above the median income of 62 000 USD in Massachusetts in 2010, with significantly more men in this group.
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ween genders was statistically significant
Households in Boston Inner Core sample
Trip destinations in Greater Boston
How are boston residents getting to/fROM night-time leisure? Preferred mode by share of trip counts
Preferred mode by share of trip counts
Preferred mode by share of access and egress time
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Conclusion
n the work to date, we do not investigate mode preference, recreation types and trip chaining. Understanding the link between likelihood to take transit for different types of recreation would be beneficial information towards improved transit offerings. Other aspects that could be explored further is how much time either gender spends traveling to access specific recreational activities, or how modes are chained differently for access versus egress.
Public transit was the least popular out of all transportation modes, with cars (as driver or passenger) and walking being the most preferred. Women were likelier to be passengers while men were likelier to be drivers. Women also made more visits to friends and family than men, but spent less time on each visit, while men made more trips for meals outside the home.
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ravel behaviors in accessing versus egressing from leisure differed from each other. Walking was on par with cars as an egress mode, while cars were the most popular access mode. Public transit also gained in share as an egress mode compared to its role as an access mode. This held both across trip counts and share of total time (minutes) spent by each gender per mode. Effective policy interventions to increase the popularity of public transit for night-time leisure access and egress should consider these gender differences to position shared transit modes to attract potential transit users. T
Only 2010-2011 travel survey data is available. In the years since then, transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft have become major providers of night-time transportation. A more comprehensive study of night-time leisure travel behaviors requires a more recent dataset that includes TNCs.
January 2025
2025 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting
Private modes (cars and taxis) were the most popular mode for accessing night-time leisure, followed by non-motorized modes (walking, biking), then by public transit (bus, train). There was a shift away from private modes when we compared access and egress modes, with non-motorized modes (walking, biking) competing for most popular mode when exiting meals outside and social visits, even outpacing private modes for the latter.
Non-motorized modes (walk, bike) were the preferred mode at least a third of the time for both access and egress.
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rains were the more preferred mode between the two transit options. What was remarkable was the flip between genders for both access and egress, with more women than men using buses. Also notable was the slightly higher proportion of men who preferred using trains to access leisure, and to exit from leisure. However, among night-time leisure travelers, women preferred using trains more than men. T
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Car usage is a higher proportion of egress time than access, while public transit takes up more share of time as an access mode than egress. While walking being a popular mode across access and egress by trip count is not surprising, it is interesting that this mode takes up a similar share across access and egress in terms of travel time. When combined with mode preference, this might indicate that respondents were less likely to use public transit because of longer access times, but seemed to be alright with using it more frequently for shorter trips when leaving leisure activities.
dataset provided by Massachusetts department of Transportation (travel survey 2010-2011)
Funding provided by the MIT-MSU partnership