A Los Angeles County Metropolitan³ Transportation Authority survey of nearly 20,000 passengers on the sprawling⁴（蔓生的） bus and rail system asked whether they felt unsafe during the last month while riding Metro due to "unwanted touching⁵, exposure, comments, or any other form of unwanted sexual behavior."

 

Traditionally, sexual harassment has been portrayed⁶ as more of a female issue. It affects everyone.- Metro employee Jeff Boberg

 

About 21% of rail passengers and 18% of bus passengers said yes. About 17% of bus riders and 13% of train riders said they felt unsafe while waiting at bus stops or train stations.

 

"This is something that we're going to look at very carefully," Metro spokesman Paul Gonzales said.

 

Metro typically asks about safety in its customer surveys, which the agency has conducted at least once a year for more than a decade. But this is the first time passengers have been asked about sexual behavior, said Jeff Boberg, an agency transportation manager who works with data and research.

 

Metro employees distribute paper surveys, printed in English and Spanish, on every transit⁷ line at least once every six months, Boberg said. Translations in nine other languages are available online for the 5% of Metro riders who do not speak English or Spanish.

 

The sexual harassment question was prompted, in part, by a national discussion about safety on public transit that followed a fatal gang rape⁸ on a New Delhi bus in 2012, Boberg said. A study by London's transit agency the following year found that 15% of women riding transit there had experienced "unwanted sexual behavior," but 90% of them had not reported it,according to the Guardian⁹.

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