Guide to Mobility and Transit Options for Older Adults

AARP releases The Getting Around Guide: An AARP Guide to Walking, Bicycling and Public Transportation. Written for people who wish to remain independent in the communities where they are living, the guide helps consumers take advantage of fun and healthy options for getting around without a car. It encourages walking, biking, and taking public transportation or other transportation options. The guide includes benefits of options, how to find them and use them, and what one can do to advocate for change to broaden the range of options in different places.

The guide is available as a pdf or in hard copy; actual size is just 5-1/2” x 8-1/2.” To order copies, call 1-888-OUR-AARP (1-888-687-2277) and ask for The Getting Around Guide, Stock # D19294. For more information, contact Lori Cohen at lccohen@aarp.org.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) report, Funding the Public Transportation Needs of an Aging Population, discusses the depth of the growing need for transportation services among Older Americans and the amounts of funding that will be necessary to provide those services. Currently, only half to two-thirds of the needs are being met for conventional transit, dial-a-ride, ADA paratransit, subsidized taxis and volunteer driver services. With the huge increase in the older population, these needs will likewise increase. The report covers universal design, planning, mobility management, coordination between government entities and all types of transportation providers, travel training, and pedestrian improvements near transit. Considerable space is given to the difficulty of predicting the levels of service and demand for the next generation of older adults.

The spreadsheet tool created to produce the national estimates has been designed in a way that allows it to be used to create estimates for particular areas or to create estimates using different assumptions than the ones used in this report. The spreadsheet tool is available on the website of the American Public Transportation Association at www.apta.com.

In addition to APTA, the report was guided by input from a technical working group that included the Community Transportation Association of America, Easter Seals Project ACTION, and the AARP Public Policy Institute, all members of the National Consortium on the Coordination of Human Services Transportation.