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Personal Travel and Transport

The Carnegie Inquiry into The Third Age examined issues affecting the life, work and livelihood of people who have finished their main job or career, or bringing up children, but who may have 20 years or more of relatively healthy and active life ahead of them. Although people enter and leave this stage of their lives are different ages, the study used the age range 50-74, for statistical purposes, to define The Third Age.

The editor of the book, Professor Tony Warnes, joined with Tim Pharoah to write the chapter on Personal Travel and Transport (chapter 4).

The Personal Travel and Transport chapter examines the significance of the third age for transport and covers:

  1. Greater opportunities for travel
  2. Inequality in the distribution of these opportunties
  3. Road casualty rates increase in the third age, when levels of exposure to risk are taken into account (road safty for third and fourth agers is brought about by spending more time indoors).
  4. A rising proportion of third agers will be drivers, with implications for the proportion of drivers with reduced abilities.
  5. The availability of local facilities to avoid the need for motorised trips is a valuable asset that should be protected from trends towards feweer and larger shops and other facilties.
  6. Difficulties of using buses and other public transport increase with declining physical agility. The report highlights the poor accessibility of much of the bus fleet, although this problem has now been addressed.
  7. Declining bus services present a major problem for  third agers who are dependent on them.
See pdf to the right
Chapter TitlePersonal Travel and Transport
Chapter AuthorTim Pharoah and Tony Warnes
Book TitleHomes and Travel: Local Life in the Third Age
Book AuthorTony Warnes (editor)
PublisherCarnegie United Kingdom Trust Dunfermline 1992
ISBN0 900259 24 8

keywords

Third age, travel, transport, ageing, equality, personal safety, road safety, road casualties, impact of ageing