Transportation options are extremely limited for older residents of Atlanta and the United States as a whole — a serious situation that could lead to isolation and diminished health and well-being.
Our calculations challenge the assumption that people age 65 and older who stop driving will automatically get special door-to-door transportation services from public transit operators like MARTA.
The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires public transit operators to provide on-demand services, called paratransit, to people of any age with serious disabilities. But the problems that interfere with driving rarely qualify as a serious disability — for example, being unable to accurately judge the speed of an oncoming car or to stay focused in complicated traffic.
In addition, transit operators are required to provide ADA paratransit services only in narrow corridors that parallel existing bus lines, but not rail lines. Nationally, between one-third and two-thirds of all older people do not live or travel within those corridors.
Moreover, ADA paratransit services are so expensive, transit operators aren’t willing to go beyond the legal minimum. The U.S. spent over $3.6 billion in 2011 to provide ADA paratransit services, an almost 200 percent increase from 1999, even though ridership only went up 49 percent. An average ADA one-way paratransit trip cost $34.59 in 2011, up from $16.09 in 1999 (not adjusted for inflation).
Atlanta faces similar costs, although MARTA’s per trip expense dropped significantly from 1999 to 2011. In 2011, MARTA’s average one-way paratransit trip cost was $36.07, down from $62.48 in 1999, while paratransit ridership increased by 3 1/2 times. Yet Atlanta provides far fewer ADA paratransit trips than many other large metropolitan areas; in 2011, MARTA provided only a half-million paratransit trips, compared with 1.8 million in Philadelphia and 1.7 million in Houston. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine that MARTA can provide older people who don’t have serious handicaps with a $72 round trip to shop or visit the doctor.
Our conservative estimate shows that older Atlanta residents with an ambulatory disability took an average of only 1.6 paratransit trips per month. That’s hardly a significant boost to mobility or an incentive to give up driving.
What’s the answer then? The solutions are all expensive and challenging, but they won’t get cheaper or less difficult by procrastinating.
Metro areas such as Atlanta must expand ADA paratransit services — even outside MARTA’s service area — to suburbs where older people are aging in place, so they can continue living in their homes if they develop serious disabilities. Cities should also provide support for volunteer driver programs and transportation systems operated by community agencies; deliver more age-appropriate public transit (modeled on successful options abroad, such as those in Sweden and Denmark); and keep older people driving safer longer through education, modifications to the highway environment, and smarter and safer cars.
The road to senior mobility may have many roadblocks, but they can — and should — be removed.
Sandra Rosenbloom is director of the Innovation in Infrastructure Program at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.
