Madison Area Bus Advocates Alliance

My cousin, who's 15 years older than I, proposed an admirable arrangement with her children. She has told them that if they commit to not invoking the agreement until they're sure it's absolutely necessary, she will commit to accepting their judgment, when the time comes, that she should stop driving.

Though that time is years away, I was reminded of this poignant act of mutual trust when I visited my hometown this past week. My parents, both in their 80s, are still driving pretty well, but if I peer down the highway just a few years, I can see how fatigue and diminished reflexes, vision and other faculties will bring their ability to drive safely into question.

Every week or so my parents, Marge and Jack, hop in their car and drive three hours from the Virginia coast to a house they built in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This home is close to their soul, and the freedom to drive there is essential to the quality of their lives. I'm beginning to consider ways to get them there when driving themselves becomes impossible.

As I discussed this growing concern with my friend Mary, she reinforced my sense of the hazards of elderly driving. Her father-in-law was driving in a California city two weeks ago and made a bad split-second decision, turned when he shouldn't have, and caused a major collision. Tragically, his wife was killed in the accident.

Statistics continue to show that drivers up to age 33 are still the most likely to have an accident, but that elderly people are most vulnerable to the physical traumas associated with accidents. As the baby boom generation ages, we can expect an increase in the rate of accidents caused by elderly drivers.

Marge and Jack have contracted for entry into a retirement facility now being built that will, among its many offerings, arrange for rides around their town. Most cities have taxi services or other transportation services that take elderly people to medical appointments, banks, the grocery store, meal programs and other social activities. Specialized transportation may be arranged for those using wheelchairs.

But longer distance transportation is another matter. As society has become more car-dependant, crucial transportation systems that allow elderly people some freedom of movement have atrophied. Passenger trains now serve only a few corridors across the nation.

Greyhound's recent announcement that it is closing hundreds of bus stations, including 44 in Wisconsin, further reduces options for residents of outlying areas. For example, when the bus station in Richland Center closes, riders will have to get to Madison to catch a Greyhound. How will they make that hour and a half journey? Such losses highlight the continuing decline of mass transportation service around the nation.

Options are limited for regional transportation available to the elderly to visit children, attend funerals, or even take small vacations. One reason is that the costs of providing public transportation have increased dramatically since Sept. 11, 2001, without the kind of public subsidy that airlines, for example, have received.

The American Public Transportation Association estimates that the industry has spent $1.7 billion of its own dollars on security initiatives since Sept. 11, and has identified another $6 billion in security needs. In contrast to the airline industry, for which $5.3 billion in federal funding is proposed for fiscal year 2005, there is no line item for public transportation security, even though 16 times the number of riders use public transportation every day as use domestic airlines.

The automobile, that ultimate symbol of freedom, has so eroded the market for alternative mass transportation options, that as we age we are at risk of becoming prisoners of its success.

* My point is not that society should pay for my parents' transportation to their country house. But the need to provide regional transportation for elderly people will only grow, and it is in society's interest to offer safe alternatives to people staying behind the wheel when they no longer can safely drive.