OCTA Seeks Help for Seniors

With Orange County’s elderly population expected to grow nearly 80% in the next two decades, the county’s largest transportation agency reported Monday that it cannot cope alone with the accompanying increase in demand for service and urged cities and businesses to fill the gap.

“We’re really not going to be able to handle the kinds of numbers we’re looking at in the future, and so we’re looking for the communities to provide transportation directly,” said Dave Simpson, spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Currently, Orange County is home to about 290,000 people 65 and older, and analysts say this group will grow to more than 500,000 by 2020. In the next five years, the greatest population increase--20%--will occur among seniors 85 and older. Only a third of that group have driver’s licenses and the other two-thirds depend on others for transportation.

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In a study approved by the agency Monday, analysts recommended that Orange County’s cities begin offering their own local transportation services to senior residents, particularly because 90% of seniors travel fewer than 10 miles from their home.

The study also recommended that businesses such as health maintenance organizations and retirement homes offer their own transportation services as well as having OCTA encourage seniors to use county bus lines.

Many seniors were reluctant to ride the bus, the study found, because they were confused by the bus schedules and they believed bus stops offered little shelter from the weather and left them vulnerable to street crime.

Orange County seniors and some of their advocates have called for the creation of a regional transportation system similar to the defunct Dial-a-Ride van program. However, transportation officials say the cost of reviving that program would be nine times that of regular bus service.

The county does provide similar transit service for the mentally and physically disabled, but it does so under a federal mandate, said OCTA analyst Amy Walston.

“Some are saying we should expand this service to seniors, but it’s just not feasible at all,” Walston said.

The study did find that about 90% of all seniors used cars to get around--64% are drivers, 26% are passengers.

The study’s authors, Nelson-Nygaard Consulting Associates of San Francisco, recommended that OCTA encourage efforts to keep seniors driving as long as they can safely do so. Among other things, transportation officials could publicize regulations regarding driver’s license renewals and monitor legislative efforts to restrict or curtail seniors’ driver’s licenses.

“We’re not advocating that more seniors drive on their own, but we would like things to go with the status quo,” Walston said.

On Monday, Shirley Cohen, 81, of Santa Ana, a senior advocate who attended the OCTA meeting, said she was heartened that the authority was studying the issue, but she said non-driving seniors had already waited too long for transportation solutions.

“We’re getting impatient,” Cohen said.