According to Macquarie University researchers, baby boomers are much less likely than previous ageing generations to swap the use of their cars in retirement for public transport.
As the baby boomer generation nears retirement age, transport and urban planners may need to rethink traditional assumptions about the travel behaviour and transport needs of the elderly, particularly those in early retirement.
Senior lecturer in the Graduate School of the Environment Dr Anna Lyth, and Master of Environmental Planning student Clare Rees recently presented their paper titled Exploring the future of car use for an ageing society: preliminary results from a Sydney study at the 27th Australasian Transport Research Forum in Adelaide. The peer reviewed paper was awarded ‘best paper’ at the forum and recognised by transport researchers as an important and up until now, lacking area of research.
Lyth and Rees found that while in the past it could reasonably be assumed that the ageing population was more likely to use public transport as they were no longer able to drive or had never driven before (especially women), this is not likely to be the case for the baby boomers. Baby boomers are the first group of people to have grown up with the motor vehicle in suburban settings, the reliance on which is firmly entrenched in their culture and lifestyle.
“Baby boomers are expected to remain healthy for longer and so will potentially be able to drive for longer. They have become used to the incorporation of cars into their lifestyles and are also likely to be wealthier than previous generations,” Lyth and Rees explain.
“US baby boomers have been almost universally licensed for much of their adult lives, and it is expected that baby boomer women will drive in record numbers in retirement and in comparable numbers to men, due to the significant number of women who are licensed and accustomed to a motoring lifestyle,” they say.
Their retirement is likely to be filled with education, part-time work and varied recreational activities as well as parenting and grandparenting duties. These numerous activities are expected to result in “patterns of travel that are more complex and car dependent than previous generations of retirees,” say Lyth and Rees.
For the research, Lyth and Rees conducted a qualitative study of 20 recent retirees from the north western suburbs of Sydney, predominantly from the Baulkham Hills Shire – an outer suburban area that displays some useful demographic and transport characteristics and was regarded as an interesting suburban ‘crucible’ to study attitudes and values displayed towards car use.
“The participants indicated that their retirement was characterised by busy lives that are best serviced by the car,” they say. “Respondents were leading full lives of scheduled activities, most of which required the use of the motor vehicle.”
Most also reported having at least two cars in the household, with the second car used as a management tool to give each partner flexibility.
Lyth and Rees believe that the trends and attitudes revealed in their research indicate that Australian cities may be facing a prolonged and increasing reliance on the car in an ageing society. They propose that further research and transport policy may need to consider a move from the current set of assumptions relating to ageing and transport choice in an era where a policy focus is on reducing urban travel demand and car use.
The research challenges the often created distinction between elderly and non-elderly car users as the values of convenience, individualism, flexibility and time appear to be just as important to those in retirement as to those within the ‘productive’ years of work, or those involved in childrearing.