Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.
-David Letterman

This past week I found myself stuck in traffic. Not a big deal happens every day; in fact it’s a tired topic for most urbane city dwellers. But what made this special is that it was in New York City, in the heart of Times Square, on Broadway, between 5:30 and 6:00 PM, while the shows were letting out flooding the streets with urbanites employing “rough guidelines,” and did I mention I was in a rented (large) SUV I’d never driven before?

How does one find themselves (voluntarily) in these kinds of scenarios? I was asking myself that very question as a sea of humanity engulfed our automobile rendering it useless and a burden; which only hours earlier in the tree-lined open roads of up-state NY made perfect sense.

Back at the Hotel

Looking down from 31 floors above Times Square the city’s arterials pulsate with yellow (taxi) hemoglobin, providing the life sustaining mobility of the residents of New York. A personal automobile is about as useful as warming up a microwave; a conventional idea which was fine for an earlier time but now makes little sense given today’s technology.

Hitting the streets you soon encounter the inherent risks of ambulating around the Big Apple and learn to adjust quickly to near misses. At first timorous defying of traffic signals (in front of NYC traffic cops) eventually morphs into a brazen bull-fighting style game of beating the taxi on the yellow light.

For most New Yorkers, walking is the key form of transportation (when you’re not standing “ON line”); this includes older residents. I began to pay attention to seniors and how they negotiated the Darwin-like conditions of the NYC streets.

Hostile Turf

Walking in NYC is not unlike any city in that it’s necessary in order to catch a bus/subway, hail a taxi, go a block to get milk or groceries, or enjoy the civic offerings; ambulation is part of everyday life and there are added risks for older people.

According to recent research by Transportation Alternatives, residents 60 or older make up only 13% of the population and account for over 33% of all pedestrian injuries and fatalities. One third of the 138 pedestrians killed by autos on the streets of NYC were seniors.

Rachel Krug, a doctoral student at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, found that only 25.2 % of seniors she researched walked at 4 feet per second—with many moving closer to 2.5 feet per second. The transportation department calculates that it takes 15 seconds to cross a 60-foot road like 23rd Street or 72nd street in Manhattan; many aging New Yorkers would need 24 seconds. Krug also notes that mobility aides such as walkers and canes as well as physical impairments will only make matters more challenging.

Mayor Bloomberg has announced a plan dubbed “Safe Streets for Seniors” which focuses on traffic engineering improvements at 25 high-accident areas for aging city dwellers. And proposals for additional age-friendly city modifications are in the works. From installing pedestrian islands, shortening crossing distances, to retiming traffic signals, simple modifications will go a long way for all those New Yorkers who are aging in place.

By 2030 one fifth of the city residents will be older than 60—out numbering school-age children, which might mean that the city that never sleeps, may occasionally have an afternoon nap…

See:
Aging and loss of independence
Push/pull factors for aging in place
Home sharing in Brooklyn promotes aging in place