United States Department of Transportation
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Alternative Title:Transit User Centered Empathy and Experience
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Abstract:Two of the trends converging in the twenty-first century are that of an aging population in the US and across the globe and increases in urbanization. This century is projected to give rise to more megacities, cities and metro areas with populations in excess of ten million people. New York and Los Angeles are already considered megacities, and Chicago is expected to join their ranks by 2030 (e.g., Razvadauskas 2018). While the invention and widespread adoption of the automobile in the twentieth century gave rise to the suburbs, patterns of urban migration, an aging population and some of the negative impacts of automobiles – pollution, congestion and consumption of natural resources – suggest that there will be increasing demands on transit systems to help people remain mobile and move efficiently around their communities as they age. Much attention around people’s mobility, particularly among older adults, is devoted to the availability of different options for people and feasibility of people’s use of different modes (e.g., Bailey 2004; DeGood 2011). In this study, however, we approach the question of keeping an aging population mobile through the lens of the accessibility of different physical environments. More specifically, we consider questions around what features of different places and spaces enhance and support the mobility of older adults – and in turn of all generations – and what opportunities exist to improve environments to increase accessibility. We focus specifically on transit, given projected growth in urban areas, as transit systems will be called upon to serve the transportation and mobility needs of these growing populations. To examine these environments through the lens of multigenerational accessibility, we explore how older adults might experience transit environments through the use of the MIT AgeLab’s AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System) suit with the goal of identifying which kinds of features help to facilitate the mobility of older adults accessing transit in urban metro areas.
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