When Barcelona’s public transport company was talking to the EIB about loans to renew its rolling stock and buy electric buses and charging infrastructure, another problem emerged that demanded a solution. In developing its social responsibility and equal opportunity policies, the company wanted to address incidents of sexual harassment and discrimination occurring on its networks.

“Our original plan only involved measures to prevent harassment directed specifically at women,” says Raquel Diaz, head of social responsibility, women and diversity at Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB). “That plan evolved, incorporating specific measures to combat LGBTIQ+-phobia on public transport networks.”

EIB Advisory experts and a team of mobility and gender experts from Spain, Portugal and Germany, with funding from the InvestEU Advisory Hub, stepped in to help TMB implement the plan and measure its impact.

“TMB had already published a sexual harassment and LGBTIQ+-phobia prevention plan,” says Manuel Pastor de Elizalde, an urban mobility expert at the EIB. “They were very advanced, but the plan was still in its early stages.”

A survey by the government of Catalonia in 2020 found that 17% of all criminal acts in the area take place on public transport, and 60% of the victims are women. More than 90% of women between the ages of 16 and 25 said they had been harassed on public transport.

“In sexual harassment prevention projects, you don’t initially want the number of reports to fall, giving the impression that bad things are happening less often,” explains Carmen Niethammer, senior gender specialist at the EIB. “You want the number of reports to rise, and the problem to be solved.”

“We all know it’s happening,” she adds, “so the question is, how can we improve trust in the grievance mechanism?” To examine the issue, EIB Advisory carried out a survey that was completed in 2023. “When we think of accessibility to transport,” says Floridea Di Ciommo, the leader of an external consultancy team that worked on the project, “we always think it refers to saving travel time or to physical accessibility, or to whether you can reach a bus stop within a few minutes. These are visible criteria. But if a person is assaulted, or if a young woman is stared at or teased or even touched, of course she avoids using public transport if she can.”

These circumstances discourage women from using public transport, and they also hurt their ability to find jobs, get an education and access good healthcare. The consultants’ work confirmed what TMB understood early on: Preventing sexual harassment is a social responsibility, but it also has economic benefits for the community.

TMB identified five main areas for action: creating safer, friendlier, more welcoming spaces; training staff; raising awareness of the problem in the general population; bringing training into schools; and reviewing ways the police and other bodies can help.

The company held regular meetings with the consultants and EIB Advisory experts to discuss the plan’s progress and the next steps.

“TMB brought in their people from security, communication, emergencies, the train operators and bus drivers,” says urban mobility expert Pastor de Elizalde.

Even before the advisory project began, TMB had installed emergency buttons for travellers and had placed cameras throughout its network in metro stations, trains and buses. The cameras are monitored by units in direct contact with the police. The company also improved lighting in metro stations.

In April 2022, TMB began a harassment prevention project in seven metro stations in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a town near Barcelona. On especially high-traffic days for the metro (during local festivals, for example), TMB employees were stationed around each metro stop at puntos violetas, or “purple points” (for the employees’ purple uniforms), to handle passenger complaints of harassment or LGBTIQ+-phobic behaviour. Four hundred employees in regular contact with passengers received special training to respond to such complaints.

TMB and the EIB hope the harassment prevention plan will serve as a blueprint for other regions and cities. “The vision is to highlight Barcelona as best in class,” says Niethammer. “To demonstrate that a gender-based harassment prevention plan is an investment in the community, with economic and business benefits.”