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The cover of 'Longevity Hubs: Regional Innovation for Global Aging,' a collection of articles and essays (MIT Press, 2024)
Cover: MIT Press | Background Illustration: Getty Images
This article is excerpted from Longevity Hubs: Regional Innovation for Global Aging (MIT Press, 2024), edited by Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab and a member of the AARP Board of Directors, and Luke Yoquinto. The book contains 32 articles that appeared in the Boston Globe’s “Longevity Hubs” series that ran in 2021 and 2022.
The United States is not prepared for a future when nearly 20 percent of the population is age 65 or over, and nearly a quarter of that group will not be able to drive.
To make matters worse, older Americans live disproportionately in rural and suburban locales where mass transit is scarce. The stakes involved are huge: nothing less than the physical and cognitive well-being of the fastest -growing segment of the population.
Older adults’ levels of isolation, depression, and general life satisfaction — and even the age at which they enter long-term care facilities — are all connected to how easily they can get from point A to B.
Meanwhile, the seeming silver bullet offered by fully autonomous vehicles has turned out to be something of a dud. Massive technical challenges must be overcome before vehicles can operate at high speeds safely in all environments and weather conditions without someone in the driver’s seat ready to take over at a moment's notice. That reality has proved so forbidding that a wave of consolidation has recently washed over the autonomous vehicle industry.
It's not clear that the robotaxi approach would have made that much of a dent in the elder transportation problem anyway. Older drivers often make the fraught decision to give up the keys not just out of the sense that it's the right time but also because a specific health issue forces their hand. Frequently, such issues necessitate more help than just the occasional ride — such as assistance with getting into and out of a vehicle and accompaniment during appointments or errands. In such cases, the hands-off nature of even the most flawless robotaxi would not help vast swaths of the older, nondriving population.
But the lack of a single technological silver bullet doesn't mean a more scattershot strategy couldn't work There is a quiver full of possible approaches — a number of which hail from New England. Investment in such strategies could meet the needs of different subpopulations of older adults, extending mobility across the age span.
Viable approaches with little change to physical or economic infrastructure
