Retirement News : Seniors : Boomers on the road to retirement

Boomers on the road to retirement

Date Added: 30-03-2005

THE roads of Australia will soon be filled with millions of retired baby boomers, cashed up, healthy and active – and more of them driving than any other group of retirees before.

Governments needed to ensure that the bulge of boomers, now aged 44 to 60, had good access to the local shops and services they will frequent in retirement, an environmental planner has told the HES.

At present, 12 per cent of the Australian population is over 65. By 2035, that proportion will be 22 per cent, and many of them will be baby boomers.

Anna Lyth, a senior lecturer in the graduate school of the environment at Sydney's Macquarie University, has questioned long-held ideas about the travel habits of the elderly.

Dr Lyth said assumptions that elderly people relied mostly on buses would have to be revised as she had found that baby boomers, who had grown up in a car culture, were reluctant to give up the independence of a private car.

"There is evidence that the baby boomers coming through are likely to be wealthier than previous aged cohorts, healthier and more independent, especially the females," Dr Lyth said.

"Research undertaken on women and transport shows a significant growth in car use, based on independence that has come with feminism.

"From interviews we found that dependence on the motor vehicle is strong. They couldn't see themselves not having cars and if they had to do without them it would be difficult."

But the type of travel the baby boomers will do is predicted to be localised – visits to family and friends, nearby shops – with only occasional trips into the city.

Their retirement is likely to be filled with education, part-time work and varied recreational activities as well as looking after children and grandchildren. This is expected to give patterns of travel that are more complex and car-dependent than previous generations of retirees, Dr Lyth and co-author Clare Rees say in their study, which was named best paper at last year's Australasian Transport Research Forum in Adelaide.

Local and state governments will have to design suburban centres for easier access, Dr Lyth said.

"It's important to recognise that we are going to be catering for a greater proportion of people moving in those areas."

The provision of public transport would need to change to reflect the off-peak travel of those baby boomers who don't have private cars.

"If we keep going with business as usual and planning for transport services based on assumptions of years gone by, which is often the case in transport planning, then we're not necessarily going to be meeting the needs of the community," Dr Lyth said.

For More Information:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12694392%255E12332,00.html