Transportation troubles create a lonely reality for older Michiganders

• Across Michigan, many older residents are trapped without transportation, unable to make medical appointments or run everyday errands
• Even in places with transportation services, most provide only ‘curb’ services for liability reasons
• That leaves seniors who can’t walk stairs on their own or cross crumbling sidewalks unable to reach the passenger seat

At 78 years old, Tonya McCoy wants most to visit her 90-some-year-old Aunt Rosa before it’s too late.

“She took care of the family. She was always there,” McCoy said.

Without a car, though, the two dozen miles or so between McCoy’s southwest Detroit home and her aunt’s in Southfield might as well be the distance between the planets, she said.

She has tried to sort out the bus schedule to visit her aunt. Too confusing.

Taxis? Too costly.

She considered “that Uber.” 

Told about the cost of Uber, she burst out laughing: “Guess not.”

She’s heard of $2.50 rides in Detroit for seniors that can be accessed through Myride2. She doesn’t know how to find them

She buried her face in the soft fur of her beloved terrier, Harley. “It can get lonely. I try to get out, I do. I walk,” she said.

“It’s hard getting old,” she said.

Transportation exists throughout patches of Michigan: buses, vans, taxis, and even volunteer drivers. And the ability to catch one of those rides is like most services for older Michiganders — fragmented and siloed — confining countless Michiganders to a lonely reality and disrupting crucial health care.

A patchwork of services

Michigan — unlike some other states — uses state funds to tap into all the federal dollars available to it, said Jean Ruestman, administrator of the Michigan Office of Passenger Transportation.

Michigan lawmakers set aside $351.4 million in the current Comprehensive Transportation Fund — made up of fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees and other sources — to pull down about $203 million in matching federal funds. Together, the funds help cover the costs for bus programs, vehicle maintenance, capital improvements, and mobility managers that help Michiganders tap into transportation in their area, for example. (About $26 million in state and federal dollars specifically support seniors and people with disabilities.)

Additionally, 57 of 77 of Michigan’s transit agencies have dedicated millages. 

But the different state and federal funding streams rely on different bureaucracy and rules, leaving a patchwork of services that can be difficult to access or afford and even tougher to stitch together across county lines, advocates for older Michiganders told Bridge.

“They all have their own rules and tend to silo themselves,” acknowledged Ruestman.

‘We do it backasswards’

“It’s a problem across Michigan — rural and urban,” said Richard Douglass, a retired researcher, who has been advocating for more and better-coordinated transportation in central and northern Michigan. 

Oftentimes, transportation funds stop at county lines, he said.

In some of the most rural Michigan, that means a patient is transported to the county line, then must wait for another driver for the next leg, he said: “It’s insane.”

“How do you age well if you can’t leave your home? How do you get to the doctor? How do you get groceries? How do you visit friends and do the things that make life worth living?”

Even in stretches with buses and robust transportation services — in places like Detroit — liability concerns prevent some transportation services from helping older passengers down the steps or across the ice, Douglass and other advocates told Bridge this spring during an afternoon conference in Mount Pleasant.

For his part, Douglass is urging counties to consider adding nonemergency vehicles — a transport van or bus — to each county’s Emergency Medical System. 

The liability argument against drivers helping older passengers, he said, is “a copout.”

“Liability should simply be the cost of doing business, not an obstacle to business,” he said.

An EMS service can take on increased liability costs and, further, train non-medical drivers to safely help a frail older resident, he told Bridge.

The alternative, he said, is expensive. That’s because missed medical appointments can lead to health issues that spiral into crisis, in turn, necessitating costlier transportation with lights and sirens, Douglass said.

Even without an emergency, some places must resort to using ambulances in the absence of other options — and those are costs often borne by taxpayer-funded Medicaid, he said.

“Right now, we do it backasswards. We default to the most expensive way to transport,” Douglass said. “It’s like getting a limousine from one end of Central Park to the other.”

A lonely reality

It’s difficult to say how many older Michiganders struggle with transportation. For some, friends will offer rides to the occasional doctor’s appointment, but weekly grocery runs are a different matter.

Tom Jankowski, a long-time researcher at the Wayne State University Institute of Gerontology, estimates 10-15% of Michigan's 1.9 million seniors struggle to find transportation. 

And Michigan ranks among the worst in the nation — 45th — for enabling seniors to connect to the community, according to the AARP scorecard that assesses funding sources for aging Americans.

It’s a problem that advocates say is inextricably linked to everything from food insecurity to loneliness. In Michigan, 1 in 4 older adults said they didn’t have enough friendships, according to the National Poll on Healthy Aging, an ongoing survey of US adults aged 50 to 80 years.

People who are lonely, according to the poll, are more likely to struggle with transportation and skip doctor’s visits, for example. Discerning whether loneliness is the cause of these challenges or its result is difficult, said Sarah Patterson, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and a demographer for the poll. 

But this much is clear, she said: Loneliness and some older Michiganders’ biggest challenges go “hand-in-hand.”

At Hannan Center, a long-time Detroit-based service agency, Melissa Draughn, director of social work, also sees a plethora of quality-of-life and even life-threatening concerns tied to transportation.

What do you do if “you can’t trust the meat” at the closest grocer or find transportation to help you with bags of groceries?

“We have lots of food pantries,” she said. “What do you do if you can’t reach them?” 

AgeWays, the Area Agency on Aging that provides services to six counties near Detroit, provides classes to residents new to public transportation — often older residents who have driven all their lives, but now find themselves without a license or a vehicle, said LaVonna Howard, mobility project manager for the agency and Myride2, the service that connects rides to seniors.

Moreover, these former drivers now might use canes or walkers. Or they simply don’t move as quickly. Lessons include things as simple as how to cross a busy street, Howard said.

“Traffic's not always looking for them. They want to get from this side of the street to the other side, but it's really dangerous,” she said.

In the Upper Peninsula, Gertie and Richard Servia soaked up Lake Superior and all-things-Yooper for decades — pontoon fishing, a lake cabin, the splendor of the seasons and a vast circle of friends.

But these days, the winters are interminably long, the roads often impassable, 87-year-old Gertie told Bridge earlier this year. Drivers are so fast these days, she said. 

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 Their children live hours downstate and out-of-state. And their friends?

“There are a lot of people in the same boat,” she said.

Gertie has been the sole driver since Richard’s glaucoma got so bad. Their constellation of medical appointments are an hour east to Marquette and even longer south to Escanaba.

“You hear it all the time: the older person is forced to drive and really shouldn’t be… I don’t want to cause an accident. I don't want to hurt a bunch of people,” Gertia Servia said.

‘Things you can rely on’

At least one county, Douglass said, does it right. It’s Roscommon County in north central Michigan.

Deep in this rural county, where jack pines and maples stitch a hideaway from passersby, 70-year-old Craig Johnston emerges each weekday from the thicket along a long dirt road to catch a bus to the Council on Aging senior center in Prudenville, where he washes dishes for the daily meals served to the area’s seniors.

Homeowners here pay a full mill — that’s a dollar for every $1,000 in taxable property value —  to the Roscommon County Transportation Authority. It raises about $1.5 million a year for a service that offers rides to any resident of the county, said Steven Dubois, the authority’s executive director

That includes door-to-door services, in which drivers can physically help older residents down steps and across uneven pavement or snowy sidewalks.

“It’s just always been that way — just part of the plan from Day 1,” Dubois said recently, striding across the parking lot next to both the transportation authority and the Prudenville senior center.

The service also delivers people like Johnston each day to his job and, crucially for some, social connections like those at the Council on Aging senior center, which serves up $3.50 meals, conversation, exercise classes and even a place to shoot the breeze over a game of pool.

It helps fund low-cost medical rides across the state — more than two hours away to Ann Arbor’s Michigan Medicine, for example, for doctor’s appointments.

It also pays for Rhonda Cross, a former bus driver with an easy smile and a passion for “anything transportation. I love talking transportation.”

“You can’t get a CT scan in Roscommon without leaving the county,” she said. “We can help with that.”

Cross is a mobility manager, a position largely funded by federal dollars. 

Several years ago, Cross spotted Johnston on the road as he walked his 5.5 miles one way to a previous job. She saw him the next day, too. And the next.

As the county’s mobility manager, Cross’ responsibility is to sort out transportation for residents — whether it’s on the local buses or with other services. She helped connect Johnston to his current dishwasher job.

Johnston smiled at his tiny home — just 4 feet by 6 feet — as he met recently with a Bridge writer and photographer. Life is good, the 70-year-old said.

He sleeps with a machete to ward off weasels and bear spray “just in case,” he said. He loves the sound of wildlife; a leafy canopy offers respite from summer heat. Then again, a storm can wreak dangerous havoc, he said, noting downed trees around his home.

The daily pickup by the bus and his job at the senior center, though?

“It’s good to have things you can rely on,” Johnston said.

More recently, Cross was trying to help an 80-year-old man find a way to a local park with his dog.

She’s adamant: Those kinds of rides are just as important as medical routes the Authority provides.

“It’s all about health and well-being,” she said. “Someone needs to take their dog to the vet? Someone needs to get groceries? You take those things for granted until you can’t anymore.”