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Abstract
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Background
This study contributes with knowledge about how late life transitions, in this case retirement, influence mobility and transport patterns. As the everyday structure changes for different reasons, people are likely to reconsider their travel patterns and transport mode choices. At the time of retirement, people are searching for a new everyday structure with new activities other than work, to fill the day. The choices made in this period of transition may form future mobility. Retirement as an important transition in life is therefore of central importance for transport planning and decisions aiming to influence older peoples transport patterns.
Methods
The study is based on travel diaries and qualitative interviews with 24 individuals (twelve women and twelve men), 61-67 years old, who lived in Norrköping, which is a middle-sized Swedish city with approximately 130 000 inhabitants. The informants kept a diary during one week, recording details of every journey and trip they undertook. The qualitative interviews were semi-structured and consisted of themes regarding everyday activities, how and where they travelled, people that were involved in their transport, barriers, opportunities and strategies for mobility, the local environment, and thoughts on retirement and previous and future transports. We used a qualitative content analysis for the interviews. The travel diaries were analysed by VISUAL- TimePAcTS, an application for visualising and exploring activity diary data. This application makes it possible to visualise activities and transport modes in sequential order for each informant.
Results
The results show that everyday mobility is a way of forming a structure in their new everyday life as retirees by getting out of the house, either just for a walk or to do errands. The fact that the informants are no longer temporally and spatially restricted to a working life means that some put more effort into getting out and being active. They walk or cycle to get exercise, to maintain good health, to get fresh air, but also to get out of the house.
Conclusions
Health is for many the most important individual project after leaving paid work which reflects a lifestyle that many people in this generation have had during their adulthood. A gerontological discourse on active aging is now dominating which can surely have an impact on the meaning that the informants' ascribe to mobility, and consequently on their transport mode choices.
Language: en |