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In 2010, the authors published a model of older people’s travel and mobility needs in the Quality of Ageing and Older Adults journal (Musselwhite and Haddad, 2010b). The model comprises three levels, practical (the need to get from A to B as quickly, cheaply and efficiently as possible), psychosocial (the need for independence, control and status) and aesthetic needs (the need for travel for its own sake), all which need to be fulfilled to achieve wellbeing and quality of life. Since then, the model has been translated into different languages and been cited 119 times across different formats. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Using ten years of analysing feedback that includes articles that cited the model, discussions with academics, policy makers and practitioners as well as from older people themselves, this paper reflects on the original model.

Five key themes are generated from the re-examination: the validity of the model; the utility and usefulness of needs in understanding travel behaviour and turning them into policy or practice; application of the model to different contexts; understanding the relationship between travel needs and health and wellbeing; and fitting the model to future changes in transport and social policy.

This reflection on this well-cited and well-used model allows a re-adjustment of the model, updating it to be used in conjunction with policy and practice, especially highlighting the need to further distinguish mobility for aesthetic needs.

Travel and mobility for older people has typically focussed on the practical benefits to the individual, for example, in meeting utilitarian needs of shopping, appointments and staying connected to family and friends. However, previous research has hinted that travel for its own sake, to get out and about and feel and experience mobility, may be just as important for older people and is especially missed when individuals give-up driving. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper examines travel for its own sake, usually referred to as discretionary travel, interviewing 20 older people in each of three different contexts: for drivers, for community transport users and for non-drivers who receive lifts from family and friends.

Older people not only enjoy discretionary travel, but also feel it is beneficial to their health and wellbeing. The car and especially driving, is seen as the best way to fulfil discretionary travel. Community transport users do fulfil discretionary travel needs but these are over formalised and lack spontaneity affecting feelings of control and identity. Receiving lifts from family and friends can often result in older people feeling a burden to the providers of the lifts especially when travel is viewed as discretionary.

More needs to be done to ensure discretionary travel needs are met for those without cars, highlighting the importance of such travel to community transport providers and helping reduce the feeling of being a burden to family and friends.

Policy, practice and research has tended to focus on transport as a means to an end. However, older people themselves value mobility just as much for its own sake and just to view nature. Such discretionary reasons for mobility are actually very important for health and wellbeing of older people and need more attention.

Against a backdrop in an increase in the number of older people in the United Kingdom (UK) and an increase in the amount of travel per person for this age group, the number of older people using the railway is in decline. The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation is a first step towards ascertaining why through audits of issues and problems on rolling stock and station platforms.

Rolling stock and station audits were carried out by older people across a rail network in the South West of the UK. A total of 72.2 hours of auditing took place across different sizes of station and different types of rolling stock.

Two main themes were found across both rolling stock and station audits: accessibility and information provision. With regards to accessibility, boarding and especially alighting from the train was the key issue. Across stations and in rolling stock luminance, was a key issue for older people with places being too dark or moving from places that were bright to dark. Use of stairs at stations between platforms, especially when the station is crowded was an issue. In terms of information, key issues were found with signage being too cluttered, small, hidden and inconsistent and audible announcements being difficult to decipher.

There must be improvements made to railways to help older people feel more safe and secure using them. It is suggested step free and level accessibility is found boarding and alighting from the train, but also from station entrance to carriage. Better signage is needed throughout the station and on trains, with large repeated fonts used. Lighting needs to be revisited throughout to ensure areas are bright and well-lit both on station platforms and onboard. Further research needs to look at these findings in relation to slip, trips and fall accident rates.

There is very little research on older people’s perceptions and barriers to railway use. This adds value in being one of the only studies to do so, especially from the perspective of older people themselves as co-researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how older people who are almost entirely housebound use a view from their window to make sense of the world and stay connected to the outside space that they cannot physically inhabit.

Semi-structured interviews with 42 individuals were carried out who were living at home, were relatively immobile and had an interesting view outside they liked from one or more of their windows.

The findings suggest that immobile older people enjoy watching a motion-full, changing, world going on outside of their own mobility and interact and create meaning and sense, relating themselves to the outside world.

Findings suggest that those working in health and social care must realise the importance of older people observing the outdoors and create situations where that is enabled and maintained through improving vantage points and potentially using technology.

This study builds and updates work by Rowles (1981) showing that preference for views from the window involves the immediate surveillance zone but also further afield. The view can be rural or urban but should include a human element from which older people can interact through storytelling. The view often contains different flows, between mundane and mystery and intrigue, and between expected and random.

Technologies are ubiquitous in modern Britain, gradually infiltrating many areas of our working and personal lives. But what role can technology play in the current COVID-19 pandemic? At a time when our usual face to face social interactions are temporarily suspended, many of us have reached out to technology (e.g. Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom) to help maintain a sense of closeness and connection to friends, family and vital services.

One largely unsung technology is the virtual assistant (VA), a cost-efficient technology enabling users to access the Internet of Things using little more than voice. Deploying an ecological framework, in the context of smart age-friendly cities, this paper explores how VA technology can function as an emergency response system, providing citizens with systems to connect with friends, family, vital services and offering assistance in the diagnosis of COVID-19.

We provide an illustration of the potentials and challenges VAs present, concluding stricter regulation and controls should be implemented before VAs can be safely integrated into smart age-friendly cities across the globe.

Countries across the globe are seeing both an ageing population and an increase in mobility. This chapter looks at how society deals with an ageing population that also wants or needs to be mobile. Lack of mobility is synonymous with poorer health and wellbeing, with research suggesting it can lead to loneliness, isolation and even death. Hence, it seems appropriate to keep older people as mobile as later on in life as possible. The car is often seen as the panacea to this, but older people are the group most likely to have to give-up driving. How society provides alternatives to the car depends on how mobility is viewed. This chapter argues that we need to see older people’s mobility as a human issue, understanding their needs and realising there are affective and emotive relationships between people and mobility. We still provide mobility for older people based purely on functional journeys to hospitals, services and shops. Yet research suggests mobility to connect people, for a day out, for leisure purposes and for its own sake are vital to the wellbeing of older people. Services for older people need to recognise this and provide for it and there are some good examples in the community but these are too few and far between. Additionally, because transport is seen as functional for older people, there is a lack of emphasis on the aesthetic or on providing attractive services for older people, as if this isn’t important to older people. Finally, mobility doesn’t always have to be literal for older people and there is an argument that needs can be met through potential, virtual and imaginative mobility.

The population of older people in the ‘western world’ is increasing both in number, as well a percentage of the overall population. Changes in lifestyle as a result of increased longevity and better health and social care mean that older people are being mobile later on in their life than ever before. This qualitative study adopts an iterative and grounded theory approach to eliciting and generating the travel needs of older drivers through in-depth qualitative research with 26 older car drivers and 31 ex-car drivers. The findings suggest three levels of travel needs, these being; practical, psychosocial and aesthetic. At a primary level, practical needs encompass day-to-day, functional and utilitarian travel needs. The secondary level, psychosocial needs, include a sense of control and independence, enhancing status and defining (personal and social) roles. The tertiary level are aesthetic needs, such as travel for pleasure and for enjoyment. Psychosocial and aesthetic needs are less obvious to the participants themselves, but arguably are of equal importance as practical needs. However, less provision is made for older people in meeting these needs when they give-up driving. This has implications for design of travel services for older people: highlighting the importance to place emphasis not only on practical aspects of travel, but also on meeting psychosocial and aesthetic needs.

Active travel, such as walking and cycling, has direct physical health benefits for older people. However, there are many barriers to walking and cycling including issues with the maintenance of pavements, sharing the path with other users, lack of public seating and benches, proximity of speeding traffic and narrow pavements. To create better public spaces, it is important to consider safety and accessibility of the public realm but also elements such as character, legibility, adaptability and diversity. The aesthetics of space cannot be overlooked too, in order to attract older people to use the public realm. Issues such as shared space pose different challenges for older people, though research would suggest if traffic volumes are low then sharing space with other users improves for older people.

There are many cognitive training tests purporting to both measure older people’s cognitive performance, several of which come with associated training that are deemed to improve cognition. This chapter describes cognitive tests that have been claimed to be linked to driver behaviour, and that training on them could improve driver behaviour. Of special interest are tests that could be completed at home on a computer, as it is suggested this could capture many individuals who are worried about attending a driver assessment centre and are not likely to be referred. Findings suggest that UFOV (Useful Field of View) Time Making Trail (A and B) and Dual N have research suggesting that training on them could improve driver performance for older drivers. However, the robustness of the research is debateable. There are also two physiological tests – a neck and shoulder and a general fitness test that also show promising results for improving driver performance. In addition, education and training is purported to improve driver behaviour, but although there is positive feedback from older people who attend and some short-term improvements, research on long-term improvements on driver behaviour are not yet evident. Overall, there are promising results from individual cognitive, physiological tests and from education and training suggesting that reflection on action and feedback from the task is important to improving driver performance but more research is needed.