The ability to move around freely is critical, especially for the elderly, to meet their daily needs and to socialize. As health and fitness deteriorate, many aging drivers give up their cars, which emotionally shocks them.
Public transit is supposed to help independent mobility for carless seniors. However, the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging revealed the problems with that:
The ability to move around freely is critical, especially for older people, to meet their daily needs and to socialize. As health and fitness deteriorate, many aging drivers give up their cars, which shocks them emotionally.
Public transit is supposed to help independent mobility for carless seniors. However, the McMaster Institute revealed the problems with that:
Getting to the bus stop may not even occur to us as something to consider whether it will be safe to go out at all. However, for seniors, slips and falls may become fateful. Prudently, they stay home without meeting basic needs when the long sidewalk [not shoveled of snow or ice] is in their way, especially when a walker is needed.
Walking on the bus is also challenging when you struggle to lift your walker. The elderly are conscious of the schedule and of others who might get annoyed by them being too slow.
Once on the bus, a senior is hurried to find an empty seat - it’s hard to stay upright when the bus rocks and yanks. Most seniors are embarrassed to ask for a vacant seat despite their rights being posted.
Getting off the bus: Many can't trudge through the crowded aisle to the emptier back, and despite their embarrassment, the seniors [with their walkers or troller with groceries] block the front to use the bus's kneeling feature.
Solving this mobility problem is urgent: seniors will make up a quarter of the population in the Western world by 2031. However, public transit is intrinsically inadequate, especially for seniors' needs. Thus, technological, organizational, or policy solutions for public transit other than interim are exercises in futility.
Real Solution:
Even if urban transit can be door-to-door with easy boarding, guaranteed sitting and cargo space for each passenger, we must avoid this risk of "affluence diseases".
Walking is the first skill a baby tries to acquire and the last ability a senior gives up because the optimum physical activity is conducive to mental fitness. Health complications snowball when seniors get impaired (50% with permanent hip fractures die within five years).
Civilization needs a wise, compassionate, mentally agile, and creative population. These valuable personality traits take a lifetime to develop but pay off only when somatic problems don’t interfere with the mind.
Radical solutions for the climate crisis boil down to the quality of human capital.
Aside from hypocrisy, our civilization doesn't need population or longevity for the sake of it, cannon fodder or consumer herds for the ecocidal GDP economy spawned by the psychopathic oligarchy.
It is common for seniors to become unfit for driving too soon. For a productive and happy life, people must be physically agile. Walking and biking are not options for trips over a few kilometers with luggage or in inclement weather.
The solution is an active personal vehicle (APV) - an ultra-compact, effective human-machine hybrid when human input is essential to propulsion and control.
Stored or parked upright, APV FELA takes only one sq.m or two sq.m when locked to a bike rack. As such, zero-emission FELA is a “door-to-door” or even indoor vehicle, i.e., seniors can use it inside a shopping mall.
The step-thru level is 44cm, and an optional kneeling mechanism can still lower it by another 10cm to help with stepping in/out and sitting down; you can prop yourself at the front and middle arc of the FELA cabin.
Seniors will enjoy a laid-back trip without the joint pains associated with upright bikes.
In statically stable FELA, one can’t slip and fall on an icy-groovy road. In crashes at city-dominant speeds and scenarios, you will survive surrounded by FELA structures.
Seniors can get the optimum physical activity by running daily errands, going to social events, or for nature.