Review Reports - Understanding the Role of Public Transportation in Supporting the Care Economy in Washington, DC, USA

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic of the reviewed paper is an important and up-to-date one for highlighting and exploring the problems with ensuring access to the urban transport system for care-providers (mainly women). It is a facet of the broader problem of gender bias existing in the labour market, especially in the segment of care services (both paid and unpaid).

The paper provides appropriate background information and references other studies on that topic. The research goal, gap and contribution of the paper should be identified in a way that would allow to conclude if they were achieved.

The author has chosen to start from the description of general and broader problems with a bias for planning and funding infrastructure and services (including care services). Then the general political background of the US concerning planning for relief programs concerning the COVID-19 situation was described pointing to the aforementioned bias. Lately, the issue has been elaborated on the case of the policy allowing strollers on public transport in the Washington, DC city. The research methodology and proposed procedure were presented step by step making it easy to follow and replicate the whole procedure for other cities and/or countries considering the proper adjustments in case of stakeholders involved.

The limitations of the research method are provided. This study has several drawbacks, first and foremost the general description overshadows the chosen example:

- An explanation of why such an example was chosen could be more elaborated,

- The results of the interviews are not described,

- The debate and controversies between different stakeholders are summarised but not sufficiently explained,

- There is no “discussion part” in the article – the results are in no way compared with other works, even if the Authors pointed to other US cities implementing the solution concerning strollers earlier.

The recommendations are general and not practical, other stakeholders will not be able to use them if faced with similar situations.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language is mostly fine with some minor flaws that most likely will be dealt with in the pre-publishing edition.

Author Response

See attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper examines the publicly available discussions and actions that led to the updated stroller policy and offers opportunities for improving caregiver transit access in Washington, DC, and, by extension, other cities worldwide. This paper has a strong language foundation; At the same time, the logic is very coherent, and the article structure is set reasonably; This study is relatively new and has certain practical significance. The questions in this paper are:

1.It is suggested that the source of Figure 3 should be marked like Figure 1 and Figure 2 to show the standardization and unity of this paper.

2.This paper involves fewer charts. In this paper, a lot of text is easy to make readers feel tired and may miss some points, such as the third part of Infrastructure and Care, in the case of three consecutive pages without subtitles, whether the author can draw some mind maps to help readers clarify the writing ideas ? At the same time, the article involves a large number of research data to testify the point of view. It is suggested that the supporting data should be properly listed in a chart, which is more intuitive and clear for readers to grasp the point of view of this article.

3.I personally appreciate the research content of this article, is a very practical and interesting point of view. However, there is a lack of a paragraph that intuitively expresses the innovation and research significance of this paper. It is suggested to add a paragraph to show the innovation of this paper compared with the previous literature on the role of public transportation in the nursing economy in Washington, D.C., USA.

4.Can the author increase the prospect of future related research fields in the text ?

The final opinion is: Major revision

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

See attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors took into consideration the reviewers suggestions and reworked parts of their paper.

The broader description of the gained data, both from official transcriptions and interviews provided more insight into difficulties encountered with implementing the stroller policy.

The differences between stakeholders stress the importance of proper policy development process and point on changes needed for proper evaluation of public transport performance.

Authors also reworked the structure of the paper allowing for better navigation for potential readers.

Minor flaw: Figure 4 is mentioned as figure 3 in the text - line 488.

Overall good work and interesting research.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language is mostly fine with some minor flaws that most likely will be dealt with in the pre-publishing edition.

Author Response

Thank you for your second review. We have corrected the inaccurate figure numbering. Your feedback has been very helpful.