The thought that ran through Hillary Di Menna’s mind is familiar to any woman who has spent years riding the TTC: “If I just stay quiet, I can sit through this and get home.”

It was a Friday evening in May and Di Menna had been taking the subway with a friend when she noticed a man staring at them. Her friend got off before Di Menna did, and as soon as she was gone the man sat down beside her and began to make lewd sexual advances.

“I’m sitting by the window so it’s not like I can get up and leave,” recalled Di Menna, a Toronto-based journalist and feminist activist. The man was much bigger than her, and she felt trapped. Although it was 10 p.m. and the car was crowded, none of the other passengers intervened.

She contemplated hitting the subway’s emergency alarm, but feared being trapped in the car with her harasser until help arrived. She also worried about the reaction of the other passengers. “If no one is going step in beforehand, how angry will they be that you stopped their trip home?” she said.

Fearing for her safety, Di Menna got off at the next stop, even though it wasn’t hers. He got off the train too, so she got back on. But he re-boarded too. She finally escaped when she was able to get out, run up to the street, and call her partner to come pick her up.

Di Menna said she’s been harassed and even grabbed on public transit before, but the recent incident left her shaken. “That one just really upset me, and I’m pretty used to this stuff now,” she said.

Di Menna is not alone. The TTC receives regular complaints about sexual harassment, and in the first five months of 2016, 35 sexual assaults on the transit system were reported to the commission. That amounts to almost one every four days.

That number doesn’t include incidents reported only to police. (Asked for those statistics, a police spokeswoman advised the Star to file a freedom of information request.)

Women’s safety will be on the TTC board’s agenda on Monday, when it considers a request from city council to review the transit system through a “gender-specific lens” to “address safety concerns of women and women with disabilities.”

The idea originated at the city’s disability, access and inclusion advisory committee, and was spearheaded by committee member Terri-Lynn Langdon. As a wheelchair user who has advocated on behalf of the disabled for a more equitable transit system, Langdon sees women’s safety as a matter of accessibility.

“You’re looking at half of the Toronto population not adequately being serviced because they’re not using a gender lens when they’re building the TTC,” she said.

The problem is not unique to Toronto. Anxiety around using public transit is “quite universal” among women around the world, according to Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, a professor of urban planning at the UCLA School of Public Affairs who has spent more than a decade studying women’s safety and transportation.

Her research has shown that fear of harassment cuts across lines of marital status, nationality and sexual orientation, and makes women much more likely than men to confine their use of public transit to certain hours of the day or to situations where they’re accompanied by a friend or partner.

She said operators should use “layers of different strategies” to combat the problem, from embedding safety features such as adequate lighting and clear sightlines into station design, to increasing security personnel, to involving more women in the transit planning process.

It’s particularly important to encourage women to report incidents to authorities. “Quite often a lot of women would not react,” she said. “They feel embarrassed to bring attention if they’re harassed.”

Historically, the TTC has been at the vanguard of efforts to address women’s safety issues. More than 20 years ago the commission worked with Metrac, an anti-violence-against-women organization, to create the request-stop program, which allows bus passengers travelling at night to ask to be let off between stops.

The commission also created Designated Waiting Areas (DWAs) on subway platforms that provide a safe, well-lit space and access to an intercom that enables communication with station operators.

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Loukaitou-Sideris described the TTC’s efforts as “pioneering work that has given other examples to other cities.”

But TTC spokesman Brad Ross admits the commission could do more.

One glaring area is its workforce. According to the agency’s 2014 report on diversity and human rights, only 15 per cent of TTC employees are women, while roughly 57 per cent of its passengers are female. Nine out of its 10 board members are men.

Councillor Kristin Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale), said that imbalance hinders the commission’s ability to serve its diverse customers.

“Quite honestly (if) you have a disproportionate number of able-bodied men making decisions for everybody else, then you’re going to not probably get the best outcome (in terms of) service that reflects the needs of everybody,” she said.

Ross said the agency is consciously trying to attract more women to the commission. He notes that four years ago the TTC had an all-male executive. Now, three of 10 executive positions are held by women.

Ross said the agency is also working to directly combat harassment, most significantly by working with Metrac to roll out an app allowing riders to capture and report unwanted behaviour on the transit system.

The app would automatically shut off a smartphone’s flash and camera sound to allow passengers to surreptitiously take a photo of a culprit and send it to authorities. The app is designed to address “unwanted attention and harassment,” Ross said, but also issues such as vandalism and service problems.

The agency hopes to launch the app soon, and to accompany it with a public education campaign not only to promote the new technology but also send a message to perpetrators: “They will be caught.”

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