Pink buses are a step — not the finish line — for women’s safety on Pakistan’s streets

When I was a child in Lahore, a simple bus ride could feel like a small act of bravery. My mother would stand at a doorway and wait until she knew I had boarded safely; when I travelled alone for the first time as a teenager, the relief at returning home was as noticeable as the exhaustion from constant watchfulness. For millions of Pakistani women and girls, mobility is not only about distance or cost — it is about dignity, safety, and the daily calculation of risk.

This is why the arrival of women-only “pink buses” across cities such as Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi has felt like a visible, urgent answer to a real problem. Provincial and municipal authorities have rightly framed these services as a way to improve access to education and work for women and to offer an immediate, tangible sense of security for female commuters. In Punjab, the Pink Bus rollout in Lahore covered multiple routes intended to reach students and working women. Similar services have been announced or piloted in Islamabad and Karachi.

But if the pink bus is to become more than a photo op, we need an honest assessment: women-only buses help those who can already reach boarding points and who know the service exists. They do not, by themselves, dismantle the structural barriers that limit women’s full participation in public life. Research and on-the-ground accounts show that fear of harassment—and actual harassment—remains a pervasive reason women change their travel plans, avoid jobs or forgo higher education. Systematic reviews and recent studies on women’s safety in low- and middle-income public transport systems find troubling prevalence of harassment and a clear link between unsafe transport and reduced mobility for women.

A second, practical critique is distribution and scale. Existing women-only routes often cover only a handful of corridors and operate at limited hours — meaning they help a fraction of those who need a safe commute. Past evaluations in Lahore and elsewhere found that while women who used designated services appreciated them, limited availability and route coverage left most women reliant on irregular or unsafe alternatives.

So how should policymakers, civil society, and transport authorities respond? First, treat the pink bus not as a final answer but as part of a broader policy package. That package should include expanded, well-publicized routes and schedules so that services reach suburban and peri-urban areas where many working and studying women live. Expanding coverage requires both political will and budgetary planning — and evidence-based route selection grounded in where women actually travel, not simply where it is easiest to operate.

Second, we must make ALL public transport safer. Physical measures — better lighting at stops, CCTV, and clearly marked help points — help, but only if backed by enforcement and accountability. Drivers and conductors should receive mandatory gender-sensitivity training; harassment reporting mechanisms must be clear, fast, and followed by meaningful action. Municipalities should work with women’s groups and student networks to co-design these systems; a top-down approach will never fully capture how women experience space.

Third, safety must be tied to economic opportunity. Studies show a direct relationship between women’s mobility and their labour force participation: when transport is safe and affordable, women are more likely to seek work and to sustain it. Investing in safe, reliable transit is thus not only a rights issue — it is smart economic policy. Subsidised fares for low-income women, flexible timetables for shift workers, and targeted routes to employment clusters should be part of provincial transport planning.

Finally, the pink bus should be the beginning of a campaign to shift social attitudes. Public awareness campaigns that challenge victim-blaming, educate men and boys about consent and respect, and celebrate women’s presence in public spaces are essential complements to any infrastructure investment. When communities see women travelling freely — to schools, hospitals and workplaces — the normalisation can reshape expectations and, slowly, behaviour.

The pink bus was a statement of intent: that women’s safety matters and that public policy can, and must, respond. But statements only matter if followed by scale, systems and cultural change. We should celebrate the buses, learn from their limitations, and then move quickly on to the work that will actually make a Pakistan where a child’s bus ride feels ordinary rather than brave.

If we do that — invest in routes, accountability, economics, and attitude — we can ensure our streets and buses become spaces of freedom rather than constraint. That future would be the truest measure of progress.