Time-varying accessibility to senior centers by public transit in Philadelphia

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2021.06.020Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This paper examines the time-varying accessibility to senior centers by public transit in Philadelphia using the GTFS data.

  • Accessibility to senior centers declines from the downtown to the suburbs.

  • Neighborhoods with higher shares of older adults tend to have lower accessibility to senior centers.

  • Neighborhoods with higher shares of households having zero cars are better served.

  • Neighborhoods with higher shares of African Americans and Hispanics are less well served.

Abstract

Public transit offers older adults an important alternative travel mode for accessing social activity destinations. Given the growing size and socioeconomic diversity of the older population, transportation planners should consider how current urban transit systems can better meet their needs. In this study, we examine the time-varying accessibility to senior centers by public transit in each census tract of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Senior centers are community service and activity hubs for older adults which are typically overseen by the local area agency on aging. They offer a variety of services and social activities for older adults, including free meals, volunteering opportunities, information, and technology training. Using General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data and socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we analyze how accessibility varies across census tracts with respect to the tract's share of older adults, particularly those in vulnerable subgroups. We found that accessibility to senior centers declines from the downtown area to the suburbs but varies considerably among the vulnerable subgroups studied. We also found that when accounting for the open hours of senior centers, accessibility to senior centers is generally lower around midday (2 PM) than during peak hours (8:30 AM) on Mondays. We used the vertical equity index to examine social disparities in accessibility among older adults. We found that while SEPTA underserves neighborhoods with higher shares of older adults, tracts with higher shares of some vulnerable subgroups are better served than those with lower shares. Specifically, neighborhoods with higher shares of households that have no cars are better served than those with higher shares of African American and Hispanic older adults. These results suggest that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) and the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA) should work together to better accommodate the diverse travel needs of older adults.

Introduction

The world’s population is rapidly aging. This demographic change requires cities around the world to retrofit their transportation systems to accommodate the transportation needs of older adults (here designated as individuals aged 65 and older). According to a report by the United Nations, the total population of older adults was 703 million in 2019 and is expected to double by 2050 to 1.5 billion (United Nations, 2019).

Transportation resources facilitate older adults’ access to daily social activity destinations and are critical contributors to the physical and mental health of older adults. Those who experience financial or physical difficulties in accessing transportation resources, i.e., the transport disadvantaged (Lucas, 2012), are more likely to experience mental and physical health conditions, such as loneliness and depression (Deka, 2017, Dickerson et al., 2017).

In car-dependent countries like the United States, though public transit is not the dominant travel mode among older adults, it provides a viable alternative travel mode, especially for transport disadvantaged older adults. Due to their impaired physical and cognitive health conditions, older adults are less likely than younger cohorts to drive themselves (Alsnih and Hensher, 2003, Yang et al., 2018). Public transit, therefore, provides a crucial means for older adults to access daily activity destinations, such as healthcare facilities, supermarkets, and transportation facilities (Farber et al., 2014, Ozel et al., 2016, Paez et al., 2010). Transit riders aged 65 and older in the U.S. are disproportionally low-income, female, and racial minorities living in high-density downtown settings (Hess, 2009, Lee et al., 2011, Loukaitou-Sideris et al., 2019, Rosenbloom, 2009, Yang et al., 2018). These groups are also disproportionately transport disadvantaged, and tend to have less social support to help them in daily travel (Brown, 2017, Lucas, 2012). Therefore, large cities with high shares of transport disadvantaged older adults should consider promoting public transit as an aging-friendly transportation strategy.

In this study, we focus on accessibility by transit to senior centers, which are an under-researched destination for older adults. Senior centers consolidate services and resources including healthcare, social services, food provision, and transportation. They also serve as social hubs for older adults (Kendig et al., 2017, Vitman-Schorr et al., 2017). As critical social activity destinations, they provide a sense of connectedness, social support, and necessary social services and information for older adults living nearby (Ashida and Heaney, 2008, Turner, 2004). Social workers and gerontologists argue that senior centers are particularly important for older adults who are racial minorities, females, and low-income as they tend to have less social support elsewhere (Farone et al., 2005, Turner, 2004). Given that older adults who frequent these centers tend to be transport disadvantaged (Cannon, 2015), the extent to which senior centers serve the social needs of various segments of older adults needs further exploration.

In this study, we examine older adults’ accessibility to senior centers via public transit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Using various types of open data, we calculate accessibility to 32 senior centers in Philadelphia and examine whether the city's public transit system could be improved to better serve the accessibility needs of older adults and their subgroups, such as those with low incomes and those who live alone.

This study contributes to the current literature on older adults’ accessibility by public transit in the following three ways. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine accessibility to senior centers with specific reference to public transit in a Western context. Second, this paper joins the relatively few applications of General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data that study the temporal aspects of accessibility (Farber et al., 2014, Farber and Fu, 2017). Given that GTFS data provides information about varying accessibility levels at different times of the day, this data is especially relevant for older adults, who have more flexible time schedules for travel than other age groups. However, studies utilizing this data to examine older adults’ accessibility to destinations are scarce. As most of the data in this study is open to the public, the analytical framework developed may be of use to scholars and practitioners interested in accessibility issues for older adults and other transit-dependent populations. Finally, for Philadelphia in particular, this study provides information about the spatial supply of senior center facilities in relation to both the public transit system and the distribution of older adults in various parts of the city. Such information is potentially valuable for policymakers seeking to increase social participation among older adults through improved public transit systems.

Section snippets

Literature review

This literature review is centered around two topics. First, we review the literature on older adults’ travel behavior to understand how it differs from younger groups and varies within the group. We then review the literature on accessibility to various destinations among older adults.

City context

The city of Philadelphia, equivalent to Philadelphia county, is one of the largest cities in the Northeastern region of the United States. Philadelphia is home to 1.58 million people and covers an area of 134.1 square miles. It exemplifies the aging population of America with older adults constituting 13.2% of the Philadelphia population (United States Census Bureau, 2019). Among large cities in the United States, Philadelphia also has one of the highest percentages of both people of color and

Results

We begin our analysis by considering the spatial distributions of older adults’ sociodemographic attributes and senior centers in Philadelphia. We then show how accessibility to senior centers via public transit varies across different census tracts and travel times. To simplify the analysis, we only show results for the time threshold of 20 minutes departing at 8:30 AM and 2 PM on Mondays. We further analyze equity implications using the vertical equity index above. Finally, we conduct

Discussion

This paper contributes to existing research and planning practice in a number of ways. First, this paper is, to our knowledge, the first to provide evidence of spatial and temporal disparities in access to senior centers. Gerontologists and social workers recognize that senior centers are critical for building social capital and social networks for older adults (Cannon, 2015, Farone et al., 2005), especially for the transport disadvantaged who have financial and physical barriers to accessing

Conclusions

In this paper, we have examined time-varying accessibility to senior centers via public transit at the census tract level in Philadelphia. In particular, we used GTFS data and Philadelphia’s census tract-level socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau to study how accessibility varies spatially and temporally with respect to older adults, especially vulnerable subpopulations of older adults. In spatial terms, we found that accessibility to senior centers tends to decline from Center City

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Shengxiao (Alex) Li: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Hongyu (Anna) Duan: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Tony E. Smith: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Haoyu Hu: Methodology, Software, Formal

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The study was sponsored by a small grant for undergraduate research from the Penn Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks go to Lin Han and Zijia Liu, who helped with GTFS data curation and cleaning.

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