Report: Baby boomers face limited transportation options

More than 15 million Americans will not have access to public transportation where they live by 2015, a report released Tuesday found.

The Washington, D.C.-based Transportation for America coalition released the findings of its study titled "Aging in Place, Stuck without Options," which ranked metro areas by access to public transit.

The result: 15.5 million seniors over the age of 65 will be unable to access public transportation. Atlanta will have the highest percentage of immobile seniors of any city with a population over 3 million and "poor access" for 90 percent of its elderly population to non-driving transportation options, the report found

Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., Houston, Detroit and Dallas also ranked high on the list.

In cities with fewer than 3 million people, Kansas City ranked No. 1, followed by Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, Texas, Nashville, Tenn., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

“The baby boom generation grew up and reared their own children in communities that, for the first time in human history, were built on the assumption that everyone would be able to drive an automobile,” Transportation for America co-chairman John Robert Smith said in a statement announcing the release of the report.

“What happens when people in this largest generation ever, with the longest predicted lifespan ever, outlive their ability to drive for everything? That’s one of the questions we set out to answer in this report,” he concluded. 

The report is being released with lawmakers in the process of drafting a large transportation spending bill that transit advocates are hoping to get a larger piece of the pie from.

“Communities like Atlanta have an enormous challenge before us, but it’s also an opportunity,” Atlanta Area Agency on Aging division chief Cathie Berger said in a statement released by Transportation for America. “It’s true that many of our suburban neighborhoods were built without considering the needs of an aging population. But many of the steps we could take to fix that – improving public transportation service, retrofitting our streets to be safer for walking – will improve quality of life for the entire community.”

Read the full Transportation for America report here.