Beyond Health and Retirement: Placing Transportation on the Aging Policy Agenda

However, longer life, combined with vastly different personal expectations and social structures, presents far more issues than we have confronted in previous generations. Individuals, policy makers, and business must think beyond health and retirement to include all those services and supports that are the infrastructure of daily living. Examples include communications, housing, centers of learning, community design, community service delivery, a reengineered workplace, and transportation. To meet the needs of an aging society, most, if not all of these will have to be modified. Transportation, Quality of Life, and Active Aging Transportation—like electricity—is an element of daily life that we ignore or forget until it is not available. Yet, before you can do anything, you have to get there first. In its most basic form, transportation is the ability to travel from point A to point B. However, it is much more. Older adults are usually quite clear about how they perceive transportation. Multiple studies report that older adults see the capacity to go from one place to another, when they want and how they want, as embodiment of personal freedom and independence. Likewise, not having transportation on demand is frequently associated with words like “handicapped” and “disabled” (Coughlin, 2001). Beyond what people "feel,” some research suggests that the ability to stay connected to friends and community is an important element to physical as well as mental health (Marottolli, etal. 1995). To people of all ages, transportation becomes the glue that makes all the little and large activities of a quality life possible. For older adults, it is the means to access basic necessities such as healthcare and food shopping. Equally vital to a person's quality of life, however, is transportaiton that is made up of the trips that are not often recognized as “critical” in the classic sense. Healthy aging, not just longer life, is the capacity to visit a friend, to see a movie, decide in the morning to get a haircut, to see a grandchild, or to simply get out. Older adults lead increasingly active lifestyles. Many pursue part-time work, continuing education, and a wide variety of social activities. For example, much of the volunteer workforce in the United States is comprised of older adults. Moreover, today’s older adult population enjoys generally improved health, increased education and greater incomes than their parents and grandparents before them. Simply stated, if a person has relatively good health, a wider range of interests due to formal education or life experience and the resources to pursue those interests, it is very likely that there will be increased levels of activity and demand for the mobility to participate in life. The next wave of retirees, the aging baby boomers, have indicated in multiple surveys that they intend to be even more active than their parents. How Older America Moves The new lifestyle of healthy aging adults will depend upon a safe, seamless, and responsive transportation system that includes all modes—driving, public transportation, walking, and other mobility alternatives. Figure 1 displays the percentage of trips made by older adults by car, public transit, walking, or other modes in urban, suburban and rural areas. Driving for Life In the United States, transportation for all ages is defined as driving. Like their children, older adults overwhelmingly choose the automobile as their primary mode of transportation. As revealed by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS), over 80 percent of people age 65+ choose to drive or ride as a passenger in a car to make a variety of trips, including shopping, medical, family or personal business, religious activity, and recreation. Rosenbloom (1999), Burkhardt (1998), and other researchers have noted that the increase in licensing patterns among older adults, as well as increased trip making by automobile, are indicative of continued and growing reliance on the car. Baby boomers who have grown up with the car are