The feeling of safety in public transportation in the Helsinki metropolitan area : Case study
Friberg, Aleksi (2024)
2024
Master's Programme in Security and Safety Management
Johtamisen ja talouden tiedekunta - Faculty of Management and Business
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-06-07
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202405306514
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202405306514
Tiivistelmä
How safe do you feel while using public transportation? Do you consider some areas unsafe but want to know if other travelers share the same feeling? This thesis’s primary goal is to study the feeling of safety in the Helsinki metropolitan area (Helsingin Seudun Liikenne, HSL, region) to find out how safe passengers feel while using public transportation and the factors affecting this feeling.
The feeling of safety should be something that everyone deserves without exceptions. Aggressive behavior has been rising in the Helsinki metropolitan area, and public transportation is a big part of moving around the cities. There are multiple modes of public transportation available in the Helsinki metropolitan region, including buses, trains, trams, metros, and a ferry. The most common mode of public transportation in the Helsinki metropolitan region is the bus lines.
This research aims to find the factors that influence people’s feeling of safety while using the public transportation system. This research also tries to identify where public transportation users feel the most unsafe in the HSL region and to find out how these matches the author’s hypothesis.
This research is done for HSL in cooperation with HSL research and safety units. A quantitative questionnaire gathered the main data for the research that the author created and developed together with the HSL units, and then distributed to HSL users gathering over 10 000 replies.
The spots where travelers felt the most unsafe were identified as station areas. Some of this study’s results differ from earlier studies made on the same subject. In Finland, there is no significant difference in the feeling of safety between the genders, whereas in earlier studies in other countries, women had a lower feeling of safety. Age affected the feeling of safety, but from the hypothesis “older people feel more vulnerable,” the results were the opposite. From 50 years old up, the feeling of safety was rising.
The most influencing result was the rising amount of violence that have been seen by the participants in the surrounding area and in the public transportation vehicles. There was also relation between the feeling of safety and the perceived level of service quality. The perceived level of service quality impacted the feeling of safety; the higher the service level was, the higher the feeling of safety. The feeling of safety was affected by multiple factors, but the main factor was the fear of being influenced by violent act.
The feeling of safety should be something that everyone deserves without exceptions. Aggressive behavior has been rising in the Helsinki metropolitan area, and public transportation is a big part of moving around the cities. There are multiple modes of public transportation available in the Helsinki metropolitan region, including buses, trains, trams, metros, and a ferry. The most common mode of public transportation in the Helsinki metropolitan region is the bus lines.
This research aims to find the factors that influence people’s feeling of safety while using the public transportation system. This research also tries to identify where public transportation users feel the most unsafe in the HSL region and to find out how these matches the author’s hypothesis.
This research is done for HSL in cooperation with HSL research and safety units. A quantitative questionnaire gathered the main data for the research that the author created and developed together with the HSL units, and then distributed to HSL users gathering over 10 000 replies.
The spots where travelers felt the most unsafe were identified as station areas. Some of this study’s results differ from earlier studies made on the same subject. In Finland, there is no significant difference in the feeling of safety between the genders, whereas in earlier studies in other countries, women had a lower feeling of safety. Age affected the feeling of safety, but from the hypothesis “older people feel more vulnerable,” the results were the opposite. From 50 years old up, the feeling of safety was rising.
The most influencing result was the rising amount of violence that have been seen by the participants in the surrounding area and in the public transportation vehicles. There was also relation between the feeling of safety and the perceived level of service quality. The perceived level of service quality impacted the feeling of safety; the higher the service level was, the higher the feeling of safety. The feeling of safety was affected by multiple factors, but the main factor was the fear of being influenced by violent act.