The Social and Built Environment in an Older Society (1988) / Chapter Skim
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THE ROLE OF TRANSPORTATION IN THE SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF THE AGED
THE ROLE OF TRANSPORTATION IN THE SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF THE AGED
Pages 169-189
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From page 169... ...
Later, trucks and telephones freed businesses of their dependency on downtown locations. By 1930 the auto had become the primary means of transportation for Martin Wachs is a professor in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles.
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From page 170... ...
The critical question is not how much elderly people travel but whether or not mobility limitations restrict their freedom of choice and, hence, the quality of their lives. The following paragraphs summarize some of the major differences between the travel patterns of the elderly and other population groups, and interpret these differences in an effort to gain greater understanding of the mobility patterns and needs of the elderly.
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From page 171... ...
In statistical terms, then, we often find that households consisting of elderly people travel less than households consisting of younger people in large part because they are smaller households and they have fewer workers, fewer automobiles, and less disposable income. It is hard to prove that aging directly affects one's propensity to travel but easier to identify with elderly households certain economic and demographic characteristics that are associated with reduced travel.
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From page 172... ...
Mobility may well be a severe problem for many elderly people, but the dimensions of the problem cannot be grasped fully by the aggregate analysis of travel patterns alone. COMMON STEREOTYPES OF THE ELDERLY AND THEIR MOBILITY NEEDS The mobility problems of the elderly are complex and in some cases severe, but the conventional wisdom regarding such problems is dominated by stereotypes that are for the most part untrue.
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From page 173... ...
Perhaps because elderly people do not travel for work-related purposes and this type of travel is for most Americans the most common type, reductions in the volume of travel during the early years of retirement are mistaken for reductions in the ability to travel, especially by automobile. The stereotype of a transit-dependent elderly population may also in large part be drawn from the fact that more than 90 percent of all people in their thirties, forties, and fifties are licensed to drive and less than half of the population over the age of 70 is so licensed.
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From page 174... ...
Because many of today's elderly live in denser central-city neighborhoods and do not drive, and a greater proportion of the younger population lives in the suburbs and does drive, it is often said that elderly people give up their suburban communities and relocate to central-city areas after retirement when the decline in their mobility forces them to live closer to essential services. This may be true for some older people, but as a generalization, the picture is more in error than it is accurate.
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From page 175... ...
MOBILITY PROBLEMS OF THE INNER-CITY ELDERLY The elderly of our inner cities include many people who are transit dependent and accustomed to the high density of activities and neighborhood services that characterized urban neighborhoods of the early decades of this century. Many of these people grew older with their communities and never experienced the total automobile orientation that characterizes later generations more accustomed to suburban low-density living.
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From page 176... ...
This dependency becomes part of the psychological sense of dependency widely associated with aging. It explains why, in a number of attitudinal studies, elderly respondents have reported that accepting rides from others was more convenient and less physically demanding than using public transit, but it also made the respondents feel that it put them under an obligation that they would not repay, or saddled them with feelings of indebtedness (Carp, 1972a, 1972b)
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From page 177... ...
or invest a much larger amount of time in traveling than automobile users spend on such efforts (Wachs and Kumagai, 19731. A second problem with public transit is that it may involve substantial physical barriers that are difficult or impossible for some elderly people to surmount.
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From page 178... ...
~ recently conducted a survey of more than a thousand households in a central portion of Los Angeles that is well served by transit and densely populated by people of a variety of income levels and ethnic groups (Levine and Wachs, 19851. The area, like many inner-city communities, contains a large number of households headed by elderly people.
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From page 179... ...
In rough terms, by the turn of the next century, the number of suburban low-density, auto-oriented elderly will more than double, and the number of transit-dependent innercity elderly will decrease in absolute numbers and decrease even more dramatically as a proportion of the total elderly population. The mobility problems of this group will arise later in life, as increasing numbers of them survive into their late seventies, eighties, and nineties.
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From page 180... ...
Passage of the law was the first result of a series of political actions that included numerous lawsuits, legislation, and regulations affecting the transit industry. In San Francisco, for example, a bitter fight took place over the question of wheelchair access to BART stations and cars, and in 1970 Congress amended the basic Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 to declare that "it is national policy that elderly and handicapped persons have the same right as other persons to utilize mass transportation facilities and services; that special efforts have to be made in the planning and design of mass transportation facilities and services so that the availability to elderly and handicpped persons of mass transportation which they can effectively utilize will be assured."2 Yet the broad national policy stated here did not specify how agencies and transportation authorities were to meet the needs of
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From page 181... ...
This debate, which has been raging for decades and is far from resoJution, is between the proponents of "mainstreaming" or total accessibility on the one hand and those advocating the provision of separate specialized services for the elderly on the other. The proponents of total accessibility or mainstreaming argue that the law requires all transit facilities and equipment to be totally accessible to the elderly and handicapped and that emphasis should be placed on the removal of all architectural barriers and the equipping of all buses with wheelchair lifts.
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From page 182... ...
Furthermore, the use of these buses by the handicapped has been low. One transit company, for example, which has about 120 lift-equipped buses, reported that the lifts are actually deployed to serve one to four handicapped riders per day throughout its entire system; the nation's largest all-bus transit system in Los Angeles carries 51 daily wheelchair users although approximately 1,900 of its total fleet of 2,600 buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts (Southern California Rapid Transit District, 1984, p.
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From page 183... ...
The emphasis on fare reductions, like the removal of physical barriers, is of great importance to a segment of the elderly in this case, the elderly whose use of transit is limited by small disposable income. Yet reduced fares do little to improve transportation service for those who receive infrequent, sparse, or nonexistent transit service.
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From page 184... ...
Another area in which a national commitment has been made to the provision of transportation services for the elderly is the financial support of specialized paratransit services operated by social services agencies, volunteer organizations, and municipalities across the nation. Using funds available through the Older Americans Act, the Social Security Act, the Housing and Community Development Act, and hundreds of state and local statutes, senior citizen centers, health care facilities, veterans programs, and many other groups operate their own door-to-door transportation services.
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From page 185... ...
Tn addition, those who rely on public transit to fulfill their travel requirements run a high risk of becoming the victims of crimes. Social services agencies frequently provide specialized door-to-door transportation services for their clients, and these services do overcome the physical barriers and safety problem of many public transit users.
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From page 186... ...
Traditional public transit, which usually involves fixed-route, scheduled bus and rail service, meets another share of the mobility needs of the elderly, especially in the inner cities. Efforts are proceeding slowly but surely to remove architectural barriers to public transit, but for many, these services are difficult to get to, frightening to use, and limiting to the extent that they cannot serve every destination.
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From page 187... ...
Although they provide fewer trips for elderly people than autos or transit vehicles, specialized paratransit services provide critical door-to-door services for those having more severe mobility limitations. To date, however, these services have been limited in their geographic coverage and limited to certain types of trips and clients and to those making advanced reservations.
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From page 188... ...
2. Public Law 91-453, "Urban Mass Transportation Act" (1970)
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From page 189... ...
Department of Trar~sportation, Urban Mass Transportation Administration, Office of Technical Assistance, University Research and Training Program. Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association.
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