Go-along with older people to public transport in high-density cities: Understanding the concerns and walking barriers through their lens

Abstract

Introduction: We applied a go-along interview, a mobile method that enhances the contextual basis of qualitative research, to understand how older people interact with walking environments when approaching public transport in high-density cities.

Methods: We collected concerns, walking barriers and areas of improvement from older people's views by walking along with 72 participants on pre-designed walking paths towards public transport stations and stops in Hong Kong, a high-density city 90% of daily travels are made by public transport. We used content analysis with script close reading to analyse the natural conversations revolving in environmental, personal, safety and transportation factors.

Results: We found narrow sidewalks but with high pedestrian flow posed a challenge for older people. Participants worried about being bumped and would frequently dodge other pedestrians. Females worried about sidewalk crowdedness more than males. Participants have concerns to use footbridges and undergrounds due to a lack of effortless connecting facilities, and the concerns reached a peak for participants aged 70–74. Long walking in the station underground might prevent the older people from using the metro, and a seamless connection of escalators or lifts was much desirable for older people to walk from street to station underground and concourse. Other areas of improvement included pavement evenness, obstruction by store goods on the sidewalk, railing between road and pavement, seat and rest areas in the metro underground, street crossing on collector roads, and traffic signal time.

Conclusion: Our study yielded insights into which, how and why the walking environment affected public transport use of older people using the go-along method. The findings can help to address the mismatch between public transport supply and demand for older people in achieving healthy ageing in the high-density city of Hong Kong and elsewhere.