Beyond the Zimmer Frame: Transport Policy for the Older Adults We Actually Have
Key Takeaways
- Older adults are not a homogeneous group, spanning more than 40 years and widely different levels of wealth, health and ability to drive.
- Outdated stereotypes of older people as poor, frail and unable to drive are producing bad transport policy.
- Households headed by someone aged 65+ hold substantial wealth, and most over-65s rate their health as good or better.
- Universal seniors’ fare concessions spend scarce money on many well-off older adults and do little to shift people out of cars.
- Better public transport services, not discounts, would do more for the older adults who rely on them.
- Many older adults can and do cycle, especially with e-bikes, but they need better infrastructure to do so.
- Our general neglect of walking infrastructure also affects our ability to meet older adults' needs.
- Well-designed pedestrianisation schemes can serve older adults, including those with mobility challenges, rather than exclude them.
- Car dependency makes losing a licence so devastating that we avoid robust checks on whether older drivers should keep driving.
- A multimodal transport system, funded by winding back driving subsidies, would better serve older adults.
What Next?
How do your current policies impact different segments of older adults?
Introduction
This week, I am continuing my look at our transport systems through different lenses, this time focusing on older adults. Having already covered disability and poverty in recent blogs, I won’t revisit older adults who are poor or disabled here. Instead, I want to focus on other issues specific to growing older.
My central argument is simple: the public, and the politicians who respond to them, hold an outdated picture of what older adults are like, and that picture is producing bad transport policy. It shapes fare concessions, how we think about walking and cycling, and how we respond to pedestrianisation schemes. Meanwhile, the car dependency we have built leaves many older adults facing a crisis when they can no longer drive.
In this blog, I look at where those misconceptions come from, the policy consequences they create, and what a transport system that genuinely supports older adults would look like.
Misconceptions About Older Adults
When I listen to people talk about older adults, I hear the same stereotypes again and again, perhaps shaped by memories of their own grandparents. Older people are assumed to be poor, frail and unable to drive.
That picture is badly out of date. Older adults are not a homogeneous group; they vary widely in wealth, health and ability to drive. Households headed by someone aged 65+ now hold around a third of Australia’s household wealth. Three in four Australians over 65 rate their health as good or better. And the share of over-70s holding a driver’s licence keeps rising. Disability affects around a third of people aged 65–69, but 85% of those aged 90 and over. These trends apply in many rich countries.
Treating a fit, financially comfortable 65-year-old and a frail 90-year-old as if they have the same needs makes little sense.
Yet that is exactly what much of our transport policy does. Because the stereotype persists, the public and politicians continue to support policies built around it rather than around reality. Let’s look at four examples.
Policy Consequences 1: Fare Concessions
Let me start with public transport fare concessions for seniors. If your mental image of older adults is of poor pensioners who cannot drive, then discounted or free travel for them makes a lot of sense.
But that is not the reality. By most measures, many older adults are financially comfortable. So it is not clear to me why subsidising their fares is a better use of public money than other transport priorities, such as improving public transport frequency and coverage. Ironically, a more targeted approach would better serve poorer older adults: those who rely on public transport would benefit more from better services than from a discount on services that don’t meet their needs.
Do these concessions at least get older adults out of their cars? This research review sums up the evidence nicely:
“The current literature provides limited evidence that improving public transport alone leads to substantial transport mode change among older adults who continue to drive. Instead, most evidence points to incremental shifts, increased trip substitution, or the use of public transport primarily following driving reduction or cessation.”
In other words, older adults are no different from the rest of the population when it comes to mode shift. Cheaper fares and better services on their own do little to lure people out of their cars; older adults tend to switch to public transport mainly once they have already cut back or stopped driving.
So why do universal seniors’ concessions persist? I think there are two reasons:
- Younger people assume older adults are mostly poor and believe cheaper fares help them.
- Older adults are a large and politically engaged part of the electorate.
This makes these policies popular. As a result, politicians dare not touch these ‘entitlements’, even for the wealthiest older adults, despite the poor policy outcomes they deliver.
Policy Consequences 2: Cycling Policy
If your mental image of an older adult is someone who can barely walk, you are unlikely to see cycling policy as something that helps them. Indeed, anti-cycling groups often hold up older people as potential victims, arguing that more cyclists means more frail pedestrians being knocked over. (Of course, the safety data shows that older pedestrians have far more to fear from motor vehicles, but let’s not let data get in the way of a good bike-lash.)
The reality is that many people in their 60s and 70s are fit, healthy and perfectly capable of cycling. Given safe, high-quality infrastructure, they would benefit enormously from being able to ride to the shops, the park, the library or the community centre, with all the benefits for healthy ageing that come with it.
E-bikes make this even more achievable, extending both the distances older riders can cover and the hills they can tackle. The Netherlands shows what is possible. Dutch people aged 65 to 74 rode around 24 kilometres a week in 2020, while those aged 75 and over rode 14 kilometres, the same as 25 to 34-year-olds that year. Dutch riders over 70 also make the longest e-bike trips of any age group, averaging 6.8 kilometres per trip.
The appetite is here in Australia too, a country that is not known for its cycling culture. Monash University research with older Australian e-bike riders found 88% rode weekly and a third rode daily, with e-bikes helping people keep making active travel choices for longer, including people who had not previously been regular cyclists.
Policy Consequences 3: Walking
Walking is our most neglected transport mode, despite being the one almost everyone uses. Supporting older adults to walk to local shops, services, and green space should strengthen the case for investing in better walking infrastructure, given the benefits for healthy ageing.
But again, if your mental image is of older adults who can barely walk at all, you won’t see the point of investing in the things that would help them walk more: shade, benches to rest on, even footpaths, and enough time to cross at the lights.
Policy Consequences 4: Pedestrianisation
Whenever a pedestrianisation scheme is proposed, opponents are quick to argue that older adults can’t walk far, so removing cars will cut them off from the shops and services they rely on.
If your mental image of older adults is of people who can only walk with a stick or a walking frame, that argument sounds reasonable. But as we’ve seen, most older adults are not in that position, and many would welcome a town centre where they can walk, linger and meet people without dodging traffic.
Even for older adults who do have mobility challenges, the car is not the only answer. Mobility scooters and powered wheelchairs can comfortably cover the distances involved in most town centres, and they work far better in a pedestrianised space than on narrow footpaths crowded with parked cars everywhere. Good scheme design can fill the remaining gaps, with accessible parking and drop-off points at the edges, plenty of seating and shade, and smooth, step-free surfaces.
Designed this way, pedestrianisation doesn’t exclude older adults. It gives them a calmer, safer and more pleasant town centre, which is exactly the kind of place that supports them to stay active and connected as they age.
Becoming unable to drive
As well as the problems caused by misconceptions about older adults, our car-dependent transport system creates a serious challenge for those who can no longer drive safely.
Giving up a licence is one of the hardest conversations families have. Because so much of our transport system assumes you can drive, losing a licence often means losing much more: independence, social connections, and easy access to shops, health services and friends. For many older adults, it marks a sudden and permanent shrinking of their world.
That is precisely why we are so reluctant to take licences away. The consequences are so severe that we shy away from robust checks on whether older drivers should keep driving, such as regular eye tests and driving assessments.
A transport system that gave people genuine alternatives to driving would make it far easier to have honest conversations about when it’s time to stop.
As with people with disabilities, personally owned autonomous vehicles could eventually offer a solution for older adults who can no longer drive. The risk is that they become a substitute for everything, with older adults using them for every trip, including short journeys they could walk or cycle. That would undermine their health and add to congestion and car dependency across the wider transport system.
Better Transport Systems
So what would a transport system that genuinely supports older adults look like?
Unsurprisingly, it looks much like the system I’ve described through the other lenses in this series. It would be multimodal, with frequent, well-connected public transport, safe and comfortable walking and cycling infrastructure, and streets that put people ahead of cars. Older adults would have real choices about how they get around, including options that keep them active and healthy, which many simply don’t have today. And when the time comes to stop driving, losing a licence would no longer mean losing their independence.
Rather than universal fare concessions, financial support would be targeted at those who need it most, as I argued for people on low incomes. That support would ideally be flexible, so people could put it towards whichever transport options best meet their needs.
How would we pay for it? Again, by winding back the many subsidies we currently give to driving.
Conclusion
Older adults are not a single group, and our transport policies should stop treating them as one. The image of the frail, poor pensioner who cannot drive describes some older adults, but it is a poor guide for policy covering people aged anywhere from 60 to 100+.
When we design around that stereotype, we get the wrong outcomes. We spend money on universal fare concessions that benefit wealthy pensioners and do little to change how people travel. We underinvest in the walking and cycling infrastructure that would support healthy ageing. And we let opponents of pedestrianisation use older adults as a shield, when many of them stand to gain significantly from better town centres.
At the same time, car dependency leaves older adults exposed when they can no longer drive safely, and that fear makes us reluctant to check whether they should still be driving at all.
The answer is a better transport system for everyone: multimodal, with good public transport, safe walking and cycling, and financial support targeted at those who need it.
