Transportation and the elderly

In an article published earlier this year, entitled Pains, Trains and no Automobiles, commuter Abu Sayeed highlighted the difficulties of maintaining social connections for the elderly where transport links are unreliable.

Even living in a large city like New York, long commutes and the high cost of travel can present barriers to the elderly and infirm who, without reliable transport, can find themselves cut off from their communities, Abu says.

Physical access to transport can often be problematic for those with mobility issues with stations in many cities featuring steep staircases. The streets between transport hubs themselves can also prove challenging to navigate for those who don't drive. In New Orleans, for example, the situation is so bad that massive Oak trees have chewed up the sidewalks in the Garden District, making passage impossible in many areas for those that are inform or use wheelchairs.

At the opposite end of the scale, living in remote villages with few transport links only increases the risk of social isolation. Newton, a tiny village in South Cambridgeshire, is serviced by a single bus each day. Without neighbours willing to drop from grandmother-in-law to the nearest town and the regular visits of friends and family, she would have been quite easily cut off.

Aside from obvious solutions like more funding for transport links and better maintenance of our streets, how can we invest in technology to keep those who are vulnerable involved in the wider community? How can technology make their journeys as safe and hassle-free as possible?

Until self-driving cars go mainstream, can we instead bring the community to the doorstep with telepresence devices and virtual reality experiences? How different is it to using elderly care monitors like Canary to satisfy our piece of mind? Would we hand off responsibility to these experience devices in much the same way, trusting that they're providing the older generation with satisfactory sensory stimulation?

Can we present such technology in a format the older generations can easily adopt? Do we really need another 'app for that' and should we be mindful about the ever increasing move towards online only services leaving the older generation behind, unable to access the very services that transport links aim to let them reach.