Integrated impacts of public transport travel and travel satisfaction on quality of life of older people

Abstract This study identifies the relationship between individual's travel and their perceived Quality of Life (QoL). We consider two variables for travel reflecting its objective/quantitative and subjective dimensions. The observed one is a measure based on public transport trip frequency and travel duration obtained from smart card data. The second is the perceived level of Travel Satisfaction which is obtained by survey data. This study is conducted in Shizuoka city, a mid-size city in Japan where we could obtain and link both data sets. We focus particularly on aging effects and therefore divide the data samples into three groups, non-elderly (less than 65 year), younger-old (65–74 years), and older-old (over 75 years). Older people show in general higher travel satisfaction. Regression analysis with travel satisfaction as dependent variable indicate the importance of travel opportunity for older-old. We then identify the relative importance of mobility on QoL considering both objective and subjective one and discuss transport policy implications for an aging society based on these results. The results provide support that public transport systems are determinants of its usage, travel satisfaction and eventually QoL. These relationships are most evident for younger-old but less significant for older-old.