Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Age-friendly environment is a significant social concern in the twenty-first century to address the global challenge of growing city-based ageing population, as the percentage of people aged over 65 years will be doubled by 2051 and most of them are living in the urban areas. This challenge might be mitigated by the age-friendly city concept of The World Health Organization. Senior’s community contribution and out-of-home activities mostly depend on the transportation which involves mobility issue. This paper examines the effectiveness of age-friendly public transportation system and its impact on the travel behavior of older people and exposes the major features of age-friendly transportation system; whether the public transportation system meets senior’s interests; significant drawbacks of present system which impede their mobility and how these can be solved. The case study uses qualitative research which includes different methods of data collection: secondary documents, observation, semi structured interviews and focus group discussions with the seniors to gather their personal experiences, to identify their attitudes towards transport-accessibility and to evaluate the age-friendly guidelines applied in the selected area. Several relevant literatures are reviewed for addressing the issue theoretically. Primary findings demonstrate the significant age-friendly guidelines operated currently which seems to be linked with active ageing, the experiences and attitudes of the older people towards transport convenience and pitfalls of the present public bus services which obstruct the age-friendly environment. Finally, some suggestions are proposed to make the public transportation system more effective for the older people and to ensue positive ageing.