September 29, 2014
News

Seventy-seven million aging baby boomers—aka the Silver Tsunami, champions of the driverless car—are about to change everything in transportation. Again.

Over the past 60 years, one group of Americans has reshaped transportation as we know it. At every life stage, the baby boomers, the largest generation in history, have placed unprecedented demands on the vehicles we drive, the roads we travel—virtually every aspect of getting from point A to point B. As children, they inspired the development of the station wagon; as parents, the mini-van. They introduced the two-car household to accommodate two working parents, boosting car ownership and expanding the highway system. They raised the median household income by 60%, triggering a travel boom.

Now those 77 million people born between 1946 and 1964 are about to unleash another wave of changes as they enter their senior years. The transportation industry has never experienced anything like the aging of the population that has just begun. Over the next 18 years, roughly 8,000 people a day will join the ranks of the over-65 population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older. By 2050, this older cohort will number 80 million, nearly double what it is today.

“This is going to drive a rethinking of everything from airplanes and airports to cars and public transit,” says Joseph Coughlin, founder and director of the MIT AgeLab. “That’s good. Because it’ll make the system safer and easier to navigate for everybody.”

Read the full article.

Fast Company Magazine