Transportation for Seniors

The state, Ventura County and its cities should take serious steps to provide better mass transit service to encourage people who no longer can or should drive to give up their cars. A lot of seniors would willingly do it; they don’t need the Department of Motor Vehicles to tell them it’s time.

Ventura County’s seniors are many. They need a convenient bus system to provide the sense of freedom they have long been denied. Existing bus stops are located so far from Ventura City Hall and the Ventura County Government Center that it effectively deters seniors from participating in local planning or political influence.

The transportation needs of seniors lose out because they are lumped in with the needs and desires of the handicapped, who have similar but significantly different needs, and recreation buffs, who lobby for more bike paths and equestrian trails.

The paratransit-minibus program scheduled to start Oct. 1 will operate under Americans with Disabilities Act rules and regulations, with funding from federal and state sources through the county transportation department. This program will require riders to make a phone call and appointment each time they want a ride. This will discourage seniors from using it, because they will feel like they are asking some bureaucrat for permission or a favor. The truly disabled have our sympathy and are entitled to the more expensive equipment necessary in their paratransit buses. But we seniors are lumped together with the ADA regulations and all we need is a number of minibuses on a regular schedule.

The county Social Services Transportation Advisory Committee is required by law to include, from each city, one disabled member, one senior member and one cyclist. But Ventura County’s committee has few members who are truly dependent on public transit. No wonder transit ranks so low on local governments’ priority lists.

Even the grand jury cited the woeful lack of transit capability in Ventura County and its cities. I urge my fellow seniors to put pressure on all our senior organizations--the senior coordinating councils, the Department of Aging, local area agencies on aging, the American Assn. of Retired Persons and others--to develop our own clout with our elected representatives to rectify a long-standing lack in our society.

Seniors have suffered for too long in far too many ways, in silence amid the din created by our children and grandchildren for their pet projects. Suitable transit facilities would be a big factor in relieving traffic congestion and other ills affecting our cities, now and in the future.

It is time for the patriarchs and matriarchs of the clan to stand up and be counted.

ART KINNE, Ventura