Getting around a city and walking around it are two different risks. In Johannesburg the transport network scores 27 points safer than the streets; in Kathmandu the streets score 20 points safer than getting around. We measured the gap for 961 cities — and it runs mostly one way: take the metro, mind the walk.
In Johannesburg the transport network scores 27 points higher than the streets around it — the widest "safe metro, risky pavement" gap of any major city. In Kathmandu, it flips: the streets score 20 points higher than getting around.
Most safety advice treats a city as a single number. But "is the subway safe?" and "is the street safe?" have genuinely different answers, and Kakapo scores them separately. Compute the gap for every city and it's clear the two rarely match: the average city separates its transport and street scores by 4.6 points, and at the extremes the gap tops 25 — big enough to change how you should actually move through the place.
This is the common case — transport outscores the street in 70% of cities — and it produces the widest gaps in the whole dataset. A modern, staffed, camera-covered metro is often the single safest environment in a city with rough streets. Johannesburg and Cape Town lead by a mile; big Western capitals show the same shape, where the pickpocket-and-scam risk lives on the pavement, not the platform.
| City | The texture | Transport | Personal | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johannesburg, South Africa | Gautrain is calm; the streets around it are not | 51 | 24 | +27 transit |
| Cape Town, South Africa | MyCiTi buses far outrank walking the CBD | 57 | 32 | +25 transit |
| San Francisco, United States | BART and Muni beat the sidewalks in parts | 76 | 57 | +19 transit |
| Chicago, United States | The 'L' is steadier than some street blocks | 75 | 56 | +19 transit |
| São Paulo, Brazil | The metro is an island of order | 58 | 39 | +19 transit |
| Barcelona, Spain | Slick metro, pickpocket-heavy streets | 78 | 60 | +18 transit |
| Washington, United States | Clean Metro, uneven streets | 78 | 60 | +18 transit |
| Paris, France | The Métro outperforms the pavement above it | 81 | 64 | +17 transit |
| Manchester, United Kingdom | Trams tidy; some streets less so | 84 | 67 | +17 transit |
| Mexico City, Mexico | Metro and Metrobús beat the street average | 59 | 43 | +16 transit |
| New York City, United States | The subway edges out the sidewalk | 79 | 63 | +16 transit |
| London, United Kingdom | The Tube is the safe way through | 85 | 69 | +16 transit |
The rarer, more counter-intuitive divide runs the other way: places that feel relaxed on foot but where getting around is the weak link. Here the hazard isn't street crime — it's chaotic traffic, unregulated taxis, informal minibuses, rented scooters and mountain roads. Kathmandu is the sharpest example; the pattern repeats across South and Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America and West Africa.
| City | The texture | Transport | Personal | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kathmandu, Nepal | Calm to walk; the roads and rides are the danger | 40 | 60 | −20 streets |
| Havana, Cuba | Safe streets, patchy and improvised transport | 51 | 63 | −12 streets |
| Accra, Ghana | Friendly on foot, risky tro-tro and taxi rides | 41 | 52 | −11 streets |
| Bali, Indonesia | Mellow to walk; scooter roads are the risk | 61 | 69 | −8 streets |
| Hanoi, Vietnam | The Old Quarter is calm; the traffic is not | 62 | 69 | −7 streets |
| Colombo, Sri Lanka | Easy streets, weaker road and rail safety | 55 | 61 | −6 streets |
| Cusco, Peru | Safe old town, hair-raising mountain roads | 50 | 53 | −3 streets |
Every Kakapo city score breaks into sub-scores; two of them are transport (safety of getting around — metro, bus, taxi, road) and personal (daytime street safety from crime). We took the 961 world cities with both sub-scores populated, kept one row per city (largest by population) and excluded New York's boroughs to avoid double-counting, then computed transport minus personal for each. We surfaced the widest divergences in both directions and hand-selected the tables down to destinations a traveller recognises. This is deliberately a city-experience cut — distinct from our airport-focused Layover Trap, which compares overall safety with transport for transit hubs. Full weighting is at https://kakapo.travel/about/methodology. Scores are comparative model estimates, not crime or crash statistics.
Free to cite in journalism, research or content — all we ask is a link back. Copy the attribution below:
Kakapo Editorial Team (2026). The Transport Divide: Cities Where Getting Around Is Far Safer (or Riskier) Than the Streets. Kakapo. https://kakapo.travel/blog/transport-divide-2026
Writing a transit, road-safety or destination story? We give journalists custom data pulls at no cost — the full transport-vs-street table, a specific country or region, or a city-by-city breakdown. Email [email protected] and we usually reply the same day.
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Kakapo publishes real safety scores for every destination, drawing on national travel advisories, local crime data, healthcare infrastructure, and night-safety measures. Kakapo Studies is our research imprint — independent editorial, no advertiser influence on scores. Contact: [email protected].