Preparing Transportation Systems for the ‘Silver Tsunami’

As more Americans age beyond their “driving life expectancy,” is our transportation system ready to handle their needs? In a piece for Streetsblog USA, Kea Wilson outlines the challenges highlighted by professor Greg Shill in an upcoming anthology, “Law and the 100 Year Life” for aging Americans as they navigate their environments after it is no longer safe for them to drive.

Shill calls on policymakers and planners to consider the needs of older adults with more tools than the “‘important’ but ‘incomplete’ strategy of re-designing streets and vehicles, which can all too easily get mired in years of NIMBY gridlock or take decades to ripple across the fleet.” For Shill, other interventions like stronger seat belt laws, more speeding stops, and rewards for good drivers would make an impact in the shorter term. 

For Shill, the key is options. “Critically, Shill argues that many kinds of communities can evolve to serve the needs of a graying population as they lose the ability to drive, whether with walkable main streets in intergenerational small towns, bustling big-city bus systems, or even micotransit vehicles in gated communities built for seniors alone.”