A few years
ago, my wife and I sat down one evening to continue planning our retirement. Our goal was to decide upon a town in which
we wished to spend our later years.
Like any
couple, our desires didn’t fully align.
We had different visions of what would be important to us in retirement.
Nor, until
our later-in-life marriage, had our lives been spent in the similar
communities. Although we both grew up
near Sacramento, I’d lived 18 years in the Pacific Northwest, while she’d spent
most of her adult life in California cities from Redding to Laguna Niguel, so
we brought different visions of the good life to our conversation.
But we
worked through our differences and reached a mutually acceptable
conclusion. We wanted to live in a place
just like Petaluma, but with a Nordstrom and a transit system that would allow
me to ride to and from a Cal basketball game, even if the game went into triple
overtime. (Exactly what city met that
definition remained an open question.)
In our focus
on transit, we were foreshadowing the concerns of an increasing number of
seniors.
Over the past
couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about the intersection of urbanism and
senior living. As should have been
expected, I’m enthusiastically supportive of creating more options for downtown
senior life.
But I’ve
also been considering the lives of seniors who would benefit from urban life
but can’t utilize that option because of the absence of suitable urban destinations
or because of market finances holding them in suburbia. Today, I’ll write about the effect of
decreasing mobility on those seniors and about possible solutions.
Eventually,
assuming we live long enough, we’ll all lose our driver’s licenses. (Paraphrasing Maurice Chevalier, “It isn’t so
bad when you consider the alternative.”)
But with so
much of American life dependent on the automobile, the loss of that mobility
can be life-changing. As Pete Lehner writes
for the Natural Resources Defense Council, seniors who find themselves stranded
by loss of their licenses are less likely to keep medical appointments, less
likely to see old friends and more likely to show signs of depression.
Lehner also
points out that the number of seniors, and therefore post-driving seniors, has
been and will continue to grow rapidly.
Lehner notes
that transit is one solution to the senior mobility problem, but cites the low
priority often given to transit funding.
He cites Wisconsin where the ratio of road to transit funding is nearly
100 to 1.
As a member
of the Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee, I can confirm that transit funding
is limited. The $88 million price being
bandied about for the Rainier Connection would be enough to fund Petaluma
Transit for thirty years.
However, I’m
unsure than any amount of transit funding can solve the problem of senior
mobility in cities configured like Petaluma.
The sprawling nature of many subdivisions makes it impossible to design
routes that will provide good transit access to most folks while still providing
timely services for those trying to keep appointments or arrive at jobs on
time. Drivable suburbia is a deep wound to the independence of seniors and
transit can only be a small bandage.
But there
are alternatives. Writing in City Lab, Paul Supawanich suggests
that peer-to-peer ride-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, can also play a
role.
Supawanich muses
that the rides required by seniors might not occur with the same times or
destinations typically served by the peer-to-peer drivers and suggests that
small stipends might be needed to ensure that enough drivers are available to
meet the demand. However, he guesses
that stipends plus fares would have a lower cost that alternatives such as
taxis or transit vans.
Lastly, Liza Barth in Consumer Reports writes
of a modified peer-to-peer ride-sharing concept for seniors that predates Uber
and Lyft. After her young son was
injured in 1995 by an older driver whose license should have been previously revoked,
Katherine Freund began to look for alternatives to senior driving.
She created
a community ride-share company, ITN America, that operates in thirty locations
across the country.
While
similar to Uber and Lyft, ITN has several key differences, in addition to its
focus on seniors. For one, many riders enroll
by giving their cars to ITN in exchange for credits that can be used for
rides. For another, many of the drivers
are young seniors, reinforcing the concept of peer-to-peer. Lastly, many of the drivers aren’t paid in
money, but instead get credits that they can use in their later years.
Are Uber or
ITN perfect solutions to senior mobility?
Not really. I’d still rather live
in a place where I can walk a block and catch a streetcar that’ll run all
night. But they help address some of the
mobility shortfall for seniors and it’s good that they exist.
Next time,
I’ll step away from urbanism and seniors for a post. Instead, I’ll write about a couple of
interesting meetings that will occur in Petaluma next week.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
(Note: For
those concerned, or perhaps hopeful, that I’ll be leaving Petaluma based on my
comments above about a retirement destination, that won’t happen. Since the conversation with my wife, various
life changes have happened, including greater community involvement and more
family members moving to Petaluma, so we’re in the North Bay for the
duration. Although I still miss a good transit
connection between here and Berkeley.)
Hah! Dave, if you leave River City you'll have to take me with you — or at least keep the Urban Chat running! Your concluding remarks prompted this query for you: How can we make our community easier to accommodate extended family/friendship networks? I'm sure this would enrich the soil for a variety of peer-to-peer type developments to make Petaluma livable for seniors. One immediate idea that springs to mind is City policies and staff who are "grandparent-unit" friendly; how then to deal with the fear of having such friendliness fall victim to income-maximization by upwardly-mobile real estate financiers?
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