Spatio-temporal travel characteristics of the elderly in an ageing society

Abstract

Hong Kong's population is ageing at an unprecedented and considerable rate, predominantly due to sustained low fertility and mortality rates. In 2013, the proportion of people aged 60 years or above was the second highest in Asia, exceeded only by that in Japan. Given that Hong Kong is a high-density, transit-oriented city, the predicted rapid growth of its elderly population is expected to significantly affect the existing public transport systems. To provide suitable policy recommendations that cater to the travel needs of an ageing society, we must investigate and understand the travel behavior and preferences of Hong Kong's elderly citizens. In this study, we extracted the household interview survey data from the 2011 Travel Characteristics Survey to identify the travel patterns of the elderly and compare them with other age cohorts and among subgroups of the elderly population. We visualize and uncover the spatio-temporal travel characteristics of the elderly, and offer policy insights that promote age-friendly public transport systems. We believe that the findings and discussions herein will prove useful in future studies aiming to establish effective and appropriate public transport policy measures to improve elderly mobility.

Is Bicycle Sharing an Environmental Practice? Evidence from a Life Cycle Assessment Based on Behavioral Surveys

“…Figure 3b shows that the introduction of bicycle sharing has the greatest impact on respondents between 25-35 years, while for other age fractions, shared bicycle has little influences on their traveling behaviors. For the respondents between 46-55 years, the introduction of shared bicycles has less impact on their traveling modes of taking subway and riding electric bicycle; the observation is consistent with the findings of Szeto et al [60]. For the respondents between 12-24 years, shared bicycles are mainly used to replace walking.…”

“…Female users are more likely to replace buses with shared bicycles and less to replace their own bicycles. This can be explained by the fact that more males owned and used private bicycles before the introduction of bicycle sharing [60]. The results of this survey that the mileages of using shared bicycle to replace other four traveling means per week of different age groups, is shown in Table 4.…”

“…Female users are more likely to replace buses with shared bicycles and less to replace their own bicycles. This can be explained by the fact that more males owned and used private bicycles before the introduction of bicycle sharing [60]. Figure 3b shows that the introduction of bicycle sharing has the greatest impact on respondents between 25-35 years, while for other age fractions, shared bicycle has little influences on their traveling behaviors.…”

“…(1) Population structure China is aging rapidly [59]. According to Szeto et al [60], the traveling mode of elderly residents is quite different from that of young ones; aged groups favor shorter walking distance and more seat availability. In the analysis of this aspect, age structure is taken as an independent variable to explore the effect on the replaced mileages and LCA results.…”

Willing to pay more for high-quality schools?

“…Normally, young adults seldom go to hospital, so they may not consider proximity to hospitals when making residential location decisions, even tend to live far away from hospitals. Notwithstanding, the elderly are in general more likely to go to hospital (Yang, 2016;Szeto et al, 2017;Wong et al, 2017) and may tend to live close to hospitals for better access due to higher visiting frequency (Li et al, 2013). In addition, it is crowded around highlevel comprehensive hospitals generally.…”