Inside the new campaign for women-only carriages on London tube trains

A student activist is calling on Transport for London (TfL) to introduce women-only carriages on the London Underground. A petition, which was created by 21-year-old University College London student Camille Brown, has gained more than 7,800 signatures at the time of writing. 

Brown is calling on the transport bosses to make the tube safer for women and girls, after a rise in public harassment and sexual offences. According to statistics recently released by TfL, during the first six months of 2025 there were 907 sexual offences reported across TfL services, an increase from 879 in 2024. According to a Freedom of Information request submitted in August 2024, reported sexual offences on London transport rose by 10 percent – from 2,418 to 2,671 – from 2023 to 2024. 

A recent BBC investigation also revealed that reports of sexual assaults and harassment on trains have risen by more than a third over the past 10 years across the UK. 

‘Public harassment of women on the London Underground is a growing issue, and TfL’s approach is failing – we always see it, we do say it, but it’s still not sorted. That’s why I’m calling for Sadiq Khan to introduce female-only carriages,’ Brown, who grew up in London, wrote on the petition. 

‘Growing up, my parents required me to send a daily “SAS” message to the family WhatsApp chat, which stood for “Safely At School”... It wasn't until I was 13 that I fully understood why my parents were so concerned about my solo route to school,’ Brown, who grew up in London, wrote on the petition. 

‘I distinctly remember, to this day, being about to get off the Circle Line at Baker Street and a man harassing me to spend the day with him, instead of go to school. I was utterly terrified and the thought that kept coming into my mind was “but I’m in school uniform” Unfortunately, even that is not armour enough to protect against intimidation, harassment or even assault.’

Brown added: ‘It was not a rare occurrence for girls at my school to arrive in tears from having experienced or witnessed something traumatising on the underground.’

Despite the campaign, TfL said it would not support women-only carriages on the network. 

Siwan Hayward, TfL’s Director of Security, Policing and Enforcement, said: ‘Everyone should feel and be safe when travelling across the network, but isolating women is not the answer to tackling sexual offences. We do not support any proposal for female-only train carriages on TfL services, but instead are working closely with the police to ensure our capital’s transport network is a hostile place for offenders, including the use of intelligence-led policing operations to target offenders and hotspot locations.

‘Women and girls should feel able to come forward and report any incident, confident that they will be taken seriously and that action will be taken. That's why we have been working with the British Transport Police over many years to raise awareness of this issue, to help customers feel more empowered to report this behaviour. While we anticipated and welcome increased reporting, any incidence of sexual harassment is utterly unacceptable and we are working hard to stamp it out on our network.

‘We encourage anyone who experiences or witnesses this behaviour to report it to the police or a member of staff, so that we can take action against offenders and ensure preventative measures are in place.’

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