Judging by how pedestrian-unfriendly the average American city has become, all our aging parents apparently enjoy being prisoners in their own homes, reports the AP. Because, oops: There comes a point when you can’t legally drive any longer. And if you depend on your car, that means you’ll have to … depend on your children instead. Fuck.
For those who don’t have built-in chauffers/gofers with 18 years of debt to pay off, though, it could be a matter of life and death.
[D]windling budgets in a tight economy have pushed communities to cut spending on delivering meals to the homebound and shuttling folks who can no longer drive to grocery stores and doctor’s offices.
Between 2000 and 2030, the number of people over the age of 65 will double, representing 1 out of every 5 Americans. That’s 72.1 million people who will be cursing the day they moved to the exurbs.
Some states have it worse than others.
Just eight years from now, researchers say, a quarter of all Ohio’s residents in half of the state’s counties will be 60 or older. Arizona and Pennsylvania project that one in four of its residents will be over the age of 60 by 2020.
Now that the economy is shit, most cities don’t have the money to build out the mass transit infrastructure that would be required to service this population. Maybe spending most of our one-time endowment of petrodollars on highways and strip malls wasn’t such a great idea?
