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Transportation key issue among growing aging population
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Legendary bandleader Duke Ellington’s hit tune, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” risks becoming a sad theme song for the nation’s graying baby boomers.
As South Carolina’s population grows older, larger in number and as driving privileges diminish with age, the ability of senior citizens to get to medical facilities, shopping centers and elsewhere is a mounting concern in the Lowcountry.
The state’s population of senior citizens age 60 and over is projected to reach nearly 1.4 million by 2025, an increase of 108% from 2000, according to the State Plan on Aging: 2005–2008, issued in October by the Office on Aging. The plan provides a blueprint on how the State Unit on Aging will manage programs and services under the federal Older Americans Act.
Among those services is transportation. However, much remains to be done in that area.
According to the plan, “Transportation funding for human service agencies/organizations has grown at a much slower rate than the demand for the services, and this trend is unlikely to change in the near future. … In order to meet these needs, particularly as the baby boomer generation ages, alternatives must be explored, implemented and evaluated, and coordination among different types of transportation service providers is essential.”
Lowcountry Initiative
Locally, Richard Giffen of Mount Pleasant is relying on the private sector to help provide transportation to Lowcountry seniors.
Giffen is forming the Independent Transportation Network. ITN seeks car donations and volunteer drivers to offer door-to-door transportation for the elderly. So far, Giffen has raised about $125,000 in private donations to launch ITN. Giffen’s goal is to raise $200,000.
ITN will include about 10 cars. “We won’t be involved with buying vans or buses,” said Giffen.
The transportation network originally was to be a branch of the Shepherd’s Center for East Cooper, part of a nationwide chain of inter-faith community centers for seniors. Giffen directed the center’s transportation project. When the center decided to forego the project because of insurance concerns, Giffen started ITN as an independent nonprofit organization.
ITN volunteers will work with homebound seniors not only to chauffer them on grocery errands, but to also do things like read newspapers for them.
How much of the tri-county area ITN will serve is still being decided.
“We’re looking at areas mass transit doesn’t serve,” Giffen said.
He added that ITN is not competing with the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority.
Revived mass transit
Now that funding from the half-cent sales tax has enabled CARTA to restore and expand its bus services and increase its fleet of buses, the transportation authority is more confident about meeting the challenge of providing service to the area’s growing senior population.
“As people become less able to drive, CARTA becomes an alternative,” said Howard Chapman, the authority’s executive director.
Although Chapman did not mention any specific plans to increase CARTA’s services to seniors, he said funding gives the transit authority flexibility to expand such services.
He pointed out that CARTA is well aware of the region’s demographics and socio-economic data and that seniors could end up comprising a major segment of CARTA’s ridership.
CARTA already serves senior centers in downtown Charleston and on James Island, plus retirement communities like Cooper Hall and Sandpiper Retirement Center in Mount Pleasant, Chapman noted.
Tele-A-Ride is a CARTA service most used by disabled seniors, although the service is open to anyone who meets the requirements of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Would-be passengers must apply for Tel-A-Ride, which offers curb-to-curb service in all of peninsular Charleston and in portions of James Island, West Ashley, Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palms, Sullivan’s Island and North Charleston.
However, Tel-A-Ride “isn’t enough” to accommodate the growing transportation needs of the region’s seniors, said Marsha Clayman, marketing director for Care for Life, a West Ashley-based organization providing homecare for the elderly.
That’s why initiatives like Richard Giffen’s Independent Transportation Network are needed, Clayman said.
Dennis Quick is the senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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