Can Buses Drive Change for Jordanian Women?

A view of the old town of Amman, Jordan, on Feb. 12, 2019. Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

AMMAN, Jordan—Elsa Nodznaya was leaving class at JUGate Academy in December 2021 when she noticed a sleek, maroon-colored bus cutting through traffic. It was a stark contrast to the older, white buses she had watched languish in Amman’s notorious gridlock since she was born. She soon began to learn more about it.

The new vehicle was part of the Amman Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, which had opened earlier that year and combined aspects of bus- and rail-based public transit. Unlike other buses, the BRT’s fleet was granted its own lanes to sidestep traffic. The next day, the 24-year-old Nodznaya decided to buy a BRT pass through an app on her smartphone and test out the new buses herself.

Nodznaya had taken public transportation in the Jordanian capital before. Counterintuitively, what is called “public transit” in Amman has long been a private, for-profit enterprise of taxis, buses, and shared taxis known as “services”—essentially, a network of all vehicles that are not personal cars. Until the BRT, government-run transit did not exist.

Each of Nodznaya’s previous trips within the privatized public transit system had left her anxious, as she endured harassment and robbery. She was also frustrated navigating unreliable bus and service schedules; because Amman’s transit system is privately run, drivers often wait to depart stops until buses are full to maximize profits.

Before taking the BRT, Nodznaya experimented with other types of public transportation, squeezing herself onto Amman’s packed buses and paying high rates to service drivers. “It was awful,” Nodznaya said, recounting the thick air and claustrophobic crowds on the buses.

But from her first ride on the BRT, Nodznaya could see a difference.

“You get on the bus, and there’s space, there’s air conditioning, [there are] cameras, and there’s a limit to how many people can get on,” said Nodznaya, who now takes the BRT as part of her commute to her administrative job at an agricultural company in the Jordan Valley. “You don’t feel constantly worried.”

People ride a bus in Amman on April 29, 2020. Mohammad Abu Ghosh via Getty Images

Jordanian women like Nodznaya are disproportionately impacted by gaps in public transportation access, since they are less likely than their male counterparts to have access to a car. Amman’s transit network is often not a realistic alternative. Over half of the city’s public transit users commute an hour or more per day and spend a significant portion of their income per month on transportation. Congested roadways mean that working women face long commutes and often return well after sunset, a practice stigmatized by many Jordanian families.

These trends have contributed to Jordanian women having one of the world’s lowest rates of labor force participation in the world, at 14 percent, despite their high levels of education. Nearly half of Jordanian women say they have turned down a job due to a lack of transportation, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the Jordanian civil society organization Sadaqa and the German foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

“There are women who limit their outings because they don’t want to sit alone with a taxi driver or they feel the seats are too close together on [private] buses,” said Ayat Husseini, a Fulbright research fellow who studies vulnerable groups’ use of the BRT system, with a focus on refugees.

By cutting down on travel time and increasing safety on public transportation, the BRT has the potential to increase Jordanian women’s personal and professional autonomy. While the system has not been running long enough to gather robust data on how it has impacted women’s labor force participation in Amman, Husseini told Foreign Policy that there is initial unpublished research showing that women feel more comfortable using the BRT than other forms of public transit.

Traffic in the streets of Amman on Feb. 8, 2014. Thierry Tronnel/Corbis via Getty Images

The BRT is operated by Amman Vision Investment & Development, a company owned by the Greater Amman Municipality. Before he began working on the BRT, Malek Bani Hamdan, Amman Vision’s health and safety officer, worked for more than a decade in Amman’s traffic police department, often responding to problems related to privately operated buses’ lack of fixed schedules, security cameras, passenger capacity limits, and well-marked stops. The latter two issues in particular led women to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable when in transit.

“The most common problem that my office delt with was gender harassment—like someone staring at a woman or saying something to make her uncomfortable on the private buses,” Bani Hamdan told Foreign Policy at the Amman Vision office.

Sadaqa’s research has found that more than 60 percent of women reported gender harassment while using public transportation. The most common type of harassment that women reported was inappropriate staring, followed by verbal abuse.

Bani Hamdan’s team aims to prevent these issues from happening on the BRT. Staff members monitor BRT bus interiors via CCTV cameras and operate a call center where riders can report complaints. In the future, BRT buses will be equipped to monitor their exteriors as well. In addition to the CCTV surveillance, Bani Hamdan says digital bus tracking and station lights have helped women feel safer, particularly when traveling in the evenings.

The BRT’s public financing model has also improved conditions for women. Private buses without fixed schedules often fail to enforce safety limits on the number of passengers who can board, meaning that women can find themselves in cramped vehicles without personal space.

“This structure is in large part why the service is unreliable. If everyone gets off the bus, they might not even finish the route,” said Hazem Zureiqat, who worked as a transport planner in the Greater Amman Municipality during the beginning of the BRT project. “The service is not attractive because it’s not reliable. A woman may have to wait at the bus stop at a place that’s isolated and unsafe, all while not knowing how long she’s going to wait.”

By contrast, BRT operators are paid based on kilometers driven, incentivizing them to stick with their routes and enforce limits on the number of passengers allowed on each bus. Amman Vision leaders hope that these changes will ultimately benefit the city’s most vulnerable citizens.

Women sell homemade cheese and eggs in downtown Amman on June 4 , 2018. KHALIL MAZRAAWI/AFP via Getty Images

Amman Vision and the Greater Amman Municipality plan to add more lines in the coming years. They also intend to expand beyond the city. The next phase of the BRT project includes a line from Amman to Zarqa, a city to the northeast of the capital. About 100,000 passengers will be able to shuttle between the two cities every day by the end of this year, according to Jordan’s Ministry of Transport. The municipality has also made transfers between some bus lines and the BRT free of charge, creating a larger network of transportation options for Amman’s residents.

The BRT project was launched in 2006 by former Amman Mayor Omar Maani. His team began by studying the distribution of residents and businesses in Amman with grants and loans from the World Bank and the French Development Agency. They weighed the option of buses against other forms of public transportation, including aboveground trams and underground subways.

“The BRT is simpler to implement than underground subways and aboveground systems. And the [BRT] buses themselves are safer and more comfortable,” said Husseini, the Fulbright fellow.

Despite their need for better public transportation, the Jordanian public has largely viewed government infrastructure projects like the BRT with cynicism. The BRT has taken more than a decade to complete and cost millions of dollars. After its launch, the BRT project came to a halt in 2011 amid accusations of corruption. An investigation eventually cleared Maani and the municipality’s team of wrongdoing, allowing the project to resume in 2015, but the allegations contributed to widespread public mistrust of the BRT and government projects more generally.

“We need to aggressively move forward with more improvements to the BRT service,” said Zureiqat, who now works at Engicon, an engineering consulting firm in Amman. “The main benefit is … the symbolism in showing people what it means to have proper public transportation.”

Since its rollout, the BRT’s ridership has been rapidly increasing. Today, the system carries about 700,000 riders per month. The high demand has resulted in longer wait times during peak hours. Despite their previous cynicism toward the BRT, Amman residents are now urging their city leaders to expand the system’s capacity to reduce wait times, add umbrellas along station platforms, and include night service.

Politicians are taking note. Late last year, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh announced the government’s plan to establish new BRT routes connecting different governorates in Jordan. And within Amman, Riyad al-Kharabsheh, the director of public transport and infrastructure projects in the Greater Amman Municipality, has made it the BRT’s goal to cover the entire Jordanian capital.

“I don’t want just to stay home. I’ve always wanted to work outside the house,” said Nodznaya, reflecting on the impact that better transportation could have on her life. “On the BRT, I’m more comfortable, and it’s easy to use. Now we need more lines and more buses.”