Dispatches via Friday Night at the Hackathon

RantWoman SHOULD perfectly well GO TO BED.

But RantWoman is still jazzed by the energy at the #cityforallhack   Okay, so a certain amount of social interaction in noisy environments seems to be required. Still RantWoman is excited by several ideas related to aging in place, social interaction, and of course transportation.

RantWoman appreciates the humor of making sidewalk repair and maintenance sexy. RantWoman finds herself torn walking in some neighborhoods. The sidewalks are crappy. The houses have Character, defined also in many cases as deferred maintenance and spendy old house problems. There are majestic trees. And it unfortunately would occur to RantWoman to rethink the neighborhood, build more housing, upgrade the sidewalks, and TRY to do it in such a way that there is still plenty of green space. in the meantime, RantWoman will see what projects and recommendations come out of getting a step or two past .csv files.

RantWoman pitched some thoughts about social isolation, faith communities, and what happens when an elder needs to quit driving, especially when the elder is also helping transport several others. The pitching and a certain amount of muddling around the room led to conversations about

--people wanting to go places like their faith communities at times when a lot of services other than bus and paratransit do not operate. RantWoman thinks there is value for these various communities in figuring out how to include aging members. On the other hand if a faith community is peopled by both healthy vibrant bicycle maniacs and elders who cannot any longer just hop on a bicycle, someone still needs to figure out how to help the elders get around.

--Many senior housing / retirement communities have some kind of vehicle able to do group transportation and even possibly group transportation for people who use mobility aids. The vehicles are underused though the tasks of aggregating demand  or potential demand scheduling, and dispatching, not to mention insuring and figuring out driver options would need work.

--Should developers be asked / expected to invest in local neighborhood transportation. If you ask RantWoman, YEP!