Metro Atlanta seniors beware: By 2015, 90 percent of area residents 65 and older are expected to live in neighborhoods with poor or nonexistent access to mass transit. That’s the worst showing among metropolitan areas with more than 3 million people, according to a new study released Tuesday, "Aging in Place: Stuck Without Options."
The study was conducted by the Center for Neighborhood Technology and released by Transportation for America, groups that advocate for sustainable development.
Atlanta also had a higher percentage of stranded seniors than any metro area in the 1 million to 3 million group, but those groups were analyzed somewhat differently, the study's authors said.
Baby boomers, aided by federal policy, built a suburban lifestyle “on the assumption that everyone would be able to drive a vehicle forever,” said John Robert Smith, president of development consultant Reconnecting America, in a conference call discussing the study's release. Now that they are aging, losing the ability to drive will strand them, he said.
According to the American Association of Retired Persons, when older people lose transportation options they make 15 percent fewer trips to the doctor and far fewer trips to family, friends and other places.
The groups called for a federal investment in mass transit expansion.
Asked why taxpayers should subsidize decisions people made decades ago to move into areas without transit, Cristina Martin Firvida, Government Affairs Director for Financial Security and Consumer Affairs at AARP, said not just baby boomers were located in the suburbs, but jobs and younger people too.
"The suburbs is where the American society exists today," she said.
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