By the year 2030, approximately 72 million people, one in five Americans (20%), will be 65 years of age and older. In this age group, people outlive their decision to stop driving by about 10 years, and three out of four live in rural and suburban communities that lack the density for traditional mass transit solutions.
Their unmet transportation needs lead to social isolation, diminished quality of life, limited access to healthcare and a strain on families and caregivers.
Mobility needs change as we age, but are poorly understood
It is apparent that our needs change as we age, but how they change, and in particular how our transportation needs change, is only generally understood. Fortunately there is a US organisation that has over a million such data points from the last 20 years.
ITNAmerica is the first national, non-profit US transportation network for older adults. It promotes lifelong mobility for seniors by supporting sustainable, community-based transportation and leading a national transportation network grounded in research, policy analysis and education. ITN affiliates offer rides 24/7 in private automobiles, and ITN uses their ride data to better understand transportation needs and behaviors for older adults and visually impaired people.
ITNAmerica’s database contains data from more than one million ITN rides gathered from more than 20 US areas, over more than 20 years. From this emerges a data-driven portrait of how older people use a barrier-free transportation service specifically designed to meet their needs.
Based on these data and the ITNAmerica annual customer satisfaction survey, the typical ITN rider is a woman (74%), age 75 or older (71%) living alone (58%). She probably has a driver’s license (69%) and owns a car (59%), but there is only one chance in three she still drives (34%). She uses ITN for the following ride purposes:
- healthcare (39.5%)
- consumer needs (23%)
- recreation (10%)
- work and volunteer activity (7%)
- religious needs (7%)
- social rides (6.5%)
- rides in general (3%)
- educational needs (2%)
- trips for intermodal connections (<1%)
- professional services, such as to lawyers and accountants (<1%)
ITN riders self-report their health status as excellent (10%), very good (21%) or good (39%) and their income ranges from low (38% less than $25,000) to high (15% greater than $75,000).
Of particular note are their special needs, with many riders requiring a:
- cane (23%)
- walker (21%) or
- wheelchair (5%)
Many seniors also report functional conditions that require special assistance, such as:
- visual impairment or blindness (15%)
- Alzheimers or dementia (5%)
- anxiety disorder (3%)
- bladder disorder (3%)
- deafness (3%)
Many in these categories also require personal or driver assistance (15%).
Options are limited
However US public transport systems struggle to meet the mobility needs of those who cannot drive. For-profit ride hailing services also offer limited help. National Public Radio recently reported that disability rights advocates see a pattern of exclusion and substandard service for people who use wheelchairs:
Uber and Lyft transformed how people get around cities, but the ride-sharing revolution hasn’t included everyone. Many people with a disability who use wheelchairs say Lyft and Uber have substandard or non-existent service for them. Disability rights advocates say they see a pattern of exclusion that violates federal law.
Good News
The good news is that there are millions of older Americans available to help fill that role. Currently, more than 40% of ITN rides are delivered by volunteer drivers who also provide personal assistance – carrying packages, folding walkers, opening doors and lending an arm for balance and security.
ITN delivers rides for everything, from older adults taking their grandchildren bowling to social engagements arranged through on-line dating services. A Creative Ride of the Month Award was even given to a retired professor to take his television to the dump. When it comes to healthcare, ITN does everything, including rides to surgery, dialysis, and complex medical procedures – about 20 medical specialties. It transports riders at every level of ability, including people in wheelchairs, amputees and people who are blind or experiencing dementia – just about everyone.
The future of mobility for older people and people with special needs may learn a lot from the non-profit volunteer services like ITN that operate in communities across the US.
By the year 2030, approximately 72 million people, one in five Americans (20%), will be 65 years of age and older.
And the comparative numbers for the UK are?
Which, admittedly has a much better public transport systems ….
Usually, careful assitance & help is provided at major ( & minor stations ) by staff, especially if informed in advance.
The “PRM” legislation seems to have accelerated an already ongoing process in supporting the less-able, certainly on rail-borne systems. I recently heard a lecture from a member of senior management of West Midlands/London Midland trains, in which he stated that “PRM” passengers should be viewed as a commercial & publicity opportunity & that more could & should be done in this area.
About buses, apart from the now-mandatory wheelchair access, I can say very little.
[ “PRM” = Persons of Restricted Mobility ]
@Greg
https://population.un.org/wpp/ – this is a pretty good resource for demographic change
The UK won’t have better mobility options of it continues it’s disastrous policy of building more suburbs away from mass transit. The development around Camborne near Cambridge is one example – low rise, car centric, “villages” with no services.
Living in North West London as a Pensioner gaining access to the Underground can be overcome by using the frequent low floor bus services to the appropriate Station. On the Central Line down the stairs to the tube at West Ruislip while down the stairs to alight at Ruislip Gardens. While only Uxbridge and Ruislip(London bound) have level access.
Planning your outings is needed but all the local hospitals have several bus services each which drop you nearer than their car parks.
There is a lot to be said residing in London as you get old, compared with the poor public transport provision in the areas outside where buses are infrequent outside rush hours and trains are not available on the Council travel passes
This is exactly where self-driving cars could find their biggest role.
I love this site, but is the slow pivot into yet another source for transport news centred on North America intentional or accidental?
Transport developments are still happening in London, all the new trains have arrived on the Goblin, and work has started on the extension to Barking Riverside. Meanwhile TfL are proposing a new West London service based around the Dudding Hill freight line.
London Reconnections was once the place where I’d have read about these things first, but it seems now it’s all about Toronto and American Pensioners…
Given the outstanding quality of journalism that this place has a hard-earned reputation for, I don’t want to start seeming ungrateful, but I can’t help feeling there’s a drift from the core mission.
(And before I get piled on for critiquing a great quality free site, I’ve been a Patreon supporter, not at the lowest tier, since that was an option)
Paul,
The point of bringing international transport developments to Reconnections’ readers is to demonstrate best practices globally that London could adopt, as well as new technologies and trends (such as eScooters and other micromobility devices) that will inevitably come to London. Other links highlight how other schemes go off track – it’s well worth learning from other cities mistakes.
And whilst London has often been a world leader in developing urban transport, there are now many other global cities implementing cutting edge technologies and concepts.
Nonetheless, the personal lives of those of us at LR Towers have been unusually busy this summer, but we are getting back on track.
The US is definitely not the place to look for transit best practices. It’s more of a place to look for transit *worst* practices that we should try to avoid.
@John: I would suspect that the problems faced by rural pensioners and other rural non-drivers in the UK are at least as bad as in the US. Many rural villages have no bus service at all, or only one or two services a week. Where there are buses they may only run until 5pm, and not at weekends, and they may connect poorly or not at all with other transport such as trains.
I have seen comments that people see no reason to support the choices of older people to live rurally by funding improved public transport, and they should move to towns, but this ignores the fact that people may be unable to afford such a move, as well as separating themselves from their support networks.
We now seem to see significant coverage of North American matters which appear to be much more “beyond” than London transport” in nature.
In view of the fact that services are expected to include Aylesbury to Milton Keynes and link services from Paddington, Marylebone (Chiltern – formerly NSE) and Liverpool Street, perhaps the moderators’ decision that East-West Rail should not be discussed in L-R could be revisited. The Western section is after all mostly in the South East region.
@Greg,
Using @Frederick’s souce, the median estimate for over 65s in UK in 2030 is over 15 million (22%), up by about 2.5 milllion from 2018. By 2050 it is over 19 million (25%), but the uncertainty range in the projection is much expanded by then.
@Silenos – Whilst I agree that many, if not most, old people can’t afford to move house (and probably couldn’t cope easily with the disruption involved), too many do make the mistake of moving on retirement to some rural idyll without thinking through what the means as they “approach to end of retirement ” (to use Osborne’s ugly ellipsis). Rural services of all kinds have been in secular decline since the ’50s and anyone retiring to the country since the ’70s cannot reasonably have expected anything other than the disappearance of, say, rural bus services.
On a personal note, when we came to retire, we thought the Welsh marches were a pleasant locale, and so they are. But a weekend in Hay convinced us that it would be fine so long as we could drive, but weighing up the cost and inconvenience of getting about when we were no longer able to do so – taxi to shops £10, taxi to doctor, £30; taxi to dentist £50 – taxi to any airport or theatre or concert £250 x2 + o/night accommodation – concluded we were better off staying put. I have seen too many friends and colleagues not make even that simplistic analysis and then regret being isolated. Of course, some small market towns manage to avoid these problems and are situated conveniently on railway lines and provide services for the surrounding area, but the decline in high streets everywhere, and “managerial gigantism” in public services will pull the rug from even those towns.
I am forcibly reminded of Iceland (!) where there are basically four towns, on each compass point, and where the government has seriously considered concentrating the entire population in Reykjavik in order to be able to provide good quality public services. To mention D villages seems modest by comparison
There’s not really anything new here – my parents were volunteer drivers/coordinators for a virtually identical service in the UK from the 1990s and I think it had been going for a while before that. This was a small market town with a station and a decent bus service compared to many other places, but still plenty of need that the public transport network couldn’t satisfy. However there must be far more of the US than the UK where there is no public transport whatsoever.
What would be really interesting would be to know whether such services are needed in somewhere like Switzerland, which has the reputation of having an all-encompassing public transport network.
@Edwin – there are a handful of such services in Switzerland, but only a handful. I agree about the coverage of bus services in rural areas, even where it is “good”. Then trouble is that the services concentrate on the trunk routes and leave the villages to one side.
In the US, I note many settlements on the Greyhound network (or what’s left of it) that receive a once a day bus if they are lucky and then only a “flag stop” on the nearest InterState -literally of no value at all for elderly or incapacitated residents who need to make routine journeys outside their settlement. Nearer to home, you might look at the Bus Eireann network where the government has done its best to maintain a reasonable level of coverage but the consequence is illustrated by a conversation I had with their planning manager when setting a PSO: “Q – these stops that have only one passenger – these are daily figures? – A. No, annual”.