Longevity, Lifestyle, and Anticipating the New Demands of Aging on the Transportation System

America’s population is aging. The baby boomers, Americans born between 1946 and 1964, are the nation’s single largest generation in history (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006). Numbering nearly 80,000,000 people, this generation has defined and characterized the demand on the country’s transportation enterprise: its infrastructure, vehicles, land use, and public as well as private institutions. The interstate highway system and the baby boomers were born and have grown older together. The car and its intimate relationship with the post–World War II American dream is something that the baby boomers grew up with and is now part of their 60+ year history and legacy (Flink, 1980). Busy boomers both in the city and the suburbs have characterized the new demands on public transportation, giving rise to express bus ways and commuter and high-speed rail, enabling the nation’s largest workforce to move within an evolving urban form that requires seamless movement between suburbs and city and—more recently from suburb to suburb. The boomers have shaped the vehicles in which all of us ride. Beginning at a young age, the baby boomers filled the back seat of station wagons designed to carry them into young adulthood. Later, vehicles designed to capture youthful fun and power, such as the Mustang, reflected the new energy of a new (auto) mobile generation. By the early 1970s and 1980s, the baby boomers had their own children giving rise to the first life stage vehicle—the minivan. In addition to infrastructure and vehicles, the baby boomers have also shaped the work of our transportation institutions. At a young age their numbers dictated expansion of streets, public transportation, sidewalks, and all the public assets that make up a community—from schools to parks. Today’s land use patterns and infrastructure reflects their life course as much as it is a product of post-War economic development. As the largest single generation, spanning 18 years, they currently fill middle and senior management as well as leadership positions in both public and private sectors. Today, they are the human capital and working knowledge of the transportation enterprise. For more than six decades the boomer generation has forged the very shape and operation of America’s transportation system. Today, one baby boomer is turning 63