Transport issues consistently emerge as a major concern of older people in New South Wales, and possibly the most significant concern for those not living in inner areas of big cities. Progress towards improvement can be achieved at the strategic level by top-down restructuring of the frameworks which govern the direction of funding, and also at the tactical level by bottom-up local experimentation in different ways of doing things. The NSW Ageing and Disability department has been working at the conceptual level for several years, but is also addressing the practical end of the spectrum via a demonstration program of specific local initiatives to improve transport for older people specifically, and usually for all other sectors of the community as well. The program seeks to identify developments that work in practice, can become self-sustaining and offer useful models for others to emulate or modify. Some twenty schemes are in operation in 1998, in outer metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas of NSW. This paper describes the evolution of the program, the range of projects and the process of evaluation. The full evaluation of the program will be completed towards the end of 1999. (A)
Abstract