By Alana Deluty
I live in Providence, where I am involved with several mobility justice projects, but I also travel a lot, always without a rental car. It can be interesting to observe and learn about a new country through a mobility justice lens, and it’s something to which I’m always paying attention.
This winter, I had the privilege of spending several months traveling extensively in East Asia, where I used buses, trains, and ferries, and did a 600 mile cycle trip in Taiwan.
One of the most marvelous things I observed during my travels is how many elderly people are out and about, living full, mobile, and independent lives. Every day, I saw older folks taking walks, stretching together in parks, dancing, reading newspapers, chatting with friends, and playing mahjong. They’re not tucked away or invisible—they’re everywhere, participating in public life with ease and grace. Part of this might be the longer life expectancy that East Asians enjoy – they live longer than we do in the US, but the number of older people I saw still felt very notable.
What struck me most is how normal it is for people in their 70s and 80s to be out in the world without assistance. They ride buses and trains solo. They walk or bike to their errands. Many older people have cool tricycles with baskets, often very joyfully decorated. They glide through intersections on tricked-out mobility scooters (in the road, no less), and drivers respect them. And just like everywhere, there are places where the pedestrian infrastructure is lacking – where sidewalks are cracked or nonexistent, and pedestrians must walk in the road. However, in these situations, I observed that vulnerable road users, including myself, were treated with far more consideration and respect than we get in Rhode Island. In fact, during my cycle trip, I was only honked at one time, and I saw a huge number of elderly people walking – many of whom enthusiastically clapped, or gave me high fives; the amount of stuff I was carrying clearly indicated that I was biking cross-country.
It’s a far cry from my experience in Providence, where, like much of the US, public life tends to have an age ceiling. When I see a child, an older person, or someone with a mobility device, crossing the road, I always stop and cork traffic with my bike. I understand and appreciate the danger crossing the road entails here in Providence. Overall, crossing the road is a dangerous activity in the US – where pedestrian deaths nearly doubled between 2012 and 2022 alone. The first few times I offered to block the road for elderly people crossing the street in Taiwan, I was met with confusion.
Before my grandmother died in 2023, she spent years gradually losing her independence, and becoming increasingly isolated. As she lost her ability to drive, and then moved from her suburban home to an assisted living facility, she had to rely on her adult children to have the desire and availability to drive her around. I spent a lot of time with my grandma before she passed, and I understood the turmoil she felt. Though she was happy to have such caring family members, she felt a lack of dignity from being unable to meet her basic needs or even indulge in shopping, her favorite hobby, independently.
Her assisted living facility was only a five minute walk from the Warwick Mall. Her physical health was pretty good and she was fairly active for her age. She easily could have walked there (and anybody who knew my grandmother would tell you that malls were her favorite place). Route 2 is so incredibly dangerous, that she might as well have been crossing the desert.
She never walked to the mall – not once.
Perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that nobody found this to be unusual, nobody felt angered, nobody felt spurred to social action. Social isolation with old age is so normal to us that we don’t even question it. We should be questioning it – because we deserve better. Growing old shouldn’t mean giving up spending time outside the home independently.
Older people deserve to have environments that allow them to feel socially connected, spend time with their friends and family, and age in place. Losing the ability to drive should not be a social life death sentence.
Aging doesn’t need to mean disappearing. It doesn’t mean surrendering your autonomy. And it doesn’t mean taking on the burden of driving a car well past the point of safety because there’s no other option. It means staying part of the world—on your own terms.
Alana Deluty is a resident of Providence and serves as the vice-chair for the city’s Green and Complete Streets Advisory Council.