The New Seniors and their New Mobility Agenda.
There is today a fast growing cohort of ever-more healthy, ever-more active 60-80+ year-old’s coming into the mobility market — and who are not prepared to docilely content themselves with hobbling around the house. So now what?
Well it turns out that there are two sides to the Seniors/Climate/Mobility coin and both need to be addressed here:
(a) LOCAL: The demand for safe and equitable mobility for all in this fast growing cohort of the population; and
(b) GLOBAL : The exploding climate and environmental impacts of fast growing senior leisure/lifestyles as the result of travel/tourism.
Stay tuned. This is not going to be particularly easy. But all this had to be factored into wise government policy.
Let’s have a look, here or over at http://bit.ly/2mN9gwV for an online survey — or
http://bit.ly/2m8axOS for our Facebook working group;
The shift from old to new mobility is not one that turns its back on the importance of high quality mobility for the economy and for quality of life for all. It is not and should not be seen as a step down in terms of life quality.
Nobody is going to willingly step down on the scale of comfort and economy. Fair enough, so let’s see how we can all step UP in terms of life quality for all with an equity-based transport strategy.
The objective here is to combine vision, policy, technology and entrepreneurial skills in such a way to create and make available to all a combined, affordable, multi-level, convenient, high choice mobility system which for just about everybody should be more efficient than owning and driving a car in or into town. Let us start with this as our goal and then see what is the work that must be done in order to turn it into a reality.
Too often when it comes to new transport initiatives, the practice is to concentrate on laying the base for the project in close working relationships with people and groups who a priori are favorably disposed to your idea, basically your choir. Leaving the potential “trouble makers” aside for another day. Experience shows that’s a big mistake. We have to take a . . .
Continue reading
That old transport paradigm, the one we are still living with today, is far too narrow in terms of the range and quality of people targeted and services offered, and in the process fails to serve what is — in fact — the transpiration majority.
At what point in life are we, you and I, “too old to drive”? When that fatal day comes, what do we do next? This is one of the unhappy surprises of contemporary life, but there is no reason that this need be personally devastating. It is after all foreseeable. In recent years we are starting to see programs emerging to help people foresee or deal with this painful transition, which for many is almost paralyzing where they live in places in which there are no decent alternatives to car travel. World Streets intends to present a series of working papers and thinkpieces on this topic over the course of 2014. This article by Adrian Davis is the first in this series. Continue reading
Ageing, Mobility and Well-being.
getting on the bus
old legs hurting with each step
then the driver smiled
The letter that follows is, as you will quickly surmise, not an actual communication from one elected official in one case, but rather a composite, a 
distillation of experience that I have had over these last years of trying to push the sustainable transportation agenda in many parts of the world, almost always in conjunction and in dialogue with mayors and other city leaders. As you will see, it is not that they are uniformly adverse to or not interested in the concepts behind sustainable transportation and sustainable cities. It is just that they have a great many other things on their mind, including staying on top day after day of the considerable challenges of managing their city — and, in not very long, running once again for reelection. This is the political reality of which those of us who would be agents of change must be aware, that politics is the art of the possible. Now let’s turn the stage over to our mayor: Continue reading
Policy makers have given ample proof that they just don’t get it. They plan and spend hard-earned taxpayer money for a distinct minority of all citizens and voters. It is amazing that they still manage to get elected. What’s going on in their heads? Continue reading
Transportation Alternatives‘ Safe Routes for Seniors campaign started in 2003 to encourage senior citizens to walk more by improving their pedestrian environment. Funded by the New York State Department of Health’s Healthy Heart program, this was the first program of its kind to address the needs of elderly pedestrians.
Click here for Elizabeth Press’s StreetFilms video.
In 2008, the City of New York launched its own Safe Streets for Seniors initiative based on TAs Safe Routes for Seniors. Focusing on 25 areas with high senior pedestrian fatalities, this program is paving new ground. Yet, some including seniors not in these zones are asking, is it enough? Stats released by Transportation Alternatives show that:
* People aged 65 years and older make up 12% of the population, yet they comprised 39% of New York City’s pedestrian fatalities between 2002 and 2006.
* The fatality rate of senior pedestrians is 40 times greater than that of child pedestrians in Manhattan.
This video is an overview of what Transportation Alternatives, New York State Department of Health, NYC DOT, community groups, and elected officials are doing to promote safe streets for seniors.
Some references:
WORLD STREETS __ A New Mobility Action Plan for 2022 