All-Ages Access: Making Transit Work for Everyone in America’s Rapidly Aging Cities

Transit can be especially important for older individuals, who “age out” of driving as their mobility, vision, and hearing decline. However, public transit can be difficult for older people to navigate, and is unreliable or insufficient for many trips in most U.S. cities. To address this challenge, cities can improve the accessibility and performance of fixed-route transit, implement services catering to riders with varying mobility needs (such as paratransit feeder service, route-deviation transit, and on-demand service) and improve the performance of paratransit through contract incentives and technology.