With the leading edge of the “Boomer” generation reaching the age of 60 next year, the U.S. is facing a flood of maturing Americans who want and need to maintain their mobility. We have never faced this type of challenge in our history. Forum participants deliberated the following proposed solutions: Acknowledge the issue. The nation seems to be in denial about the massive mobility challenge that we will face. A better understanding of our demographics at the state and regional levels will help the policy debate develop; Realize that the real solutions to this challenge are at the state and local level. The planning to address mobility demands of the elderly must be done on a regional basis, supported by federal initiatives in research, evaluation, and best practice recognition; Improvements in the existing road environments that will help a maturing population will help everyone. Better signage, traffic lights, and pavement markings are win-win investments. They are cost effective in every environment and should be encouraged as part of every Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP); Development of better automobile technology to extend the safe driving of a maturing population is also for the entire population’s benefit. Rear object sensing, forward night imaging, and better dashboard information all help make drivers safer over a longer period of driving; Develop more non-driving options. Transit options can seem both unavailable and unfriendly if they are not developed with a maturing population in mind. Easy access to bus and rail schedules, station and bus stops and route maps benefit everyone, but especially a population that is not easily convinced to use transit. On-demand service providers, in both volunteer programs and full-time staffed organizations, need to be able to provide easy service information and the have ability to custom-design their services to a changing population; Recognize that in many small urban and rural areas, there are few mobility options besides the help provided by friends and volunteers. Supporting those drivers with state laws that define the limits of liability is very important; Lastly, we need to recognize that our land use policies of isolating a maturing population in inaccessible developments that have no pedestrian access and no transit access are creating tremendous long-term social services and mobility problems. It is important that state TIPs begin to address this problem. At the end of the conference, the participants ranked some specific action steps. These included: Encourage and support volunteer senior mobility programs as a matter of policy; Create new capabilities to deal with this issue by creating the position of Senior Mobility Manager at every state DOT. Develop national training centers where states can build relevant management and planning capacities; Encourage the development of mixed-use “livable communities” where appropriate attention is paid to senior mobility. (Author/publisher)
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