Finding Your Mobility Independence
Florida has many public transit options but you may have questions about how to use them or about their safety. Whether you choose to use public transit because of natural age-related changes, economic changes, or simply because you want to, public transportation can help you achieve safe mobility for life.
Download the brochure and our Transit Ready Kit by clicking the images to the right to find tips and answers to many common questions about using public transit as a transportation option.
Finding a Ride
One of the reasons many people might continue to drive beyond the time they can safely do so is because they feel they have no other transportation choices to get to where they need and want to go. To help you find the transportation options available in your community visit findarideflorida.org/ to find the options that best fit your individual mobility needs. Find a Ride Florida is an online directory of transportation service providers in the state. The site has options listed for each of Florida’s 67 counties and is updated as more services become available. |
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- For a tip card on Find A Ride Florida click the image to the right.
- How To Use Find a Ride Florida in Three Easy Steps is a YouTube video to learn how to use Find a Ride.
If you are a provider that provides transportation services that are not shown on the website, please contact the University of Florida’s Institute for Driving, Activity, Participation, and Technology (I-DAPT).
Community Transportation Coordinators
The Florida Commission for the Transportation Disadvantaged is an independent commission within the FDOT that ensures availability of efficient, cost-effective, and quality transportation services for transportation disadvantaged persons. You can find a listing of Community Transportation Coordinators (CTC) for each county on their website.
Travel Training
Travel training is typically a one-on-one individualized instructional 
intervention to train someone who needs assistance learning to travel
safely and independently on public transportation. This need may arise from acute or chronic medical conditions, driving
cessation, loss of a spouse who was the transportation provider, moving to a new community, and/or from never having had the need to learn the
system.
Participants learn travel skills for following a specific route to common destinations, such as a job site, shopping center, or friend’s house. Potential benefits from successfully completing a travel training program include:
- More travel mode choices, flexibility of routes, and destinations;
- Greater confidence, independence, and self-esteem;
- Better access to employment, medical services, and opportunities for socialization;
- Significant cost savings.
Travel training is typically provided by both public and para-transit transportation providers or non-profit organizations, including human service providers, independent living centers, schools, and senior service organizations.
Transportation Network Companies
Companies
that use a smartphone
application to connect customers with
drivers and automate reservations,
payment, and feedback are called
Transportation Network Companies
(TNCs). You may be more familiar with
other terms such as “Ridesharing,” “App
Rides,” or “Ridesourcing.” The most
well-known companies are Uber and
Lyft.
Download the brochure by clicking the image to the right. It can help you determine if using TNCs is an option for you to get around in your community, along with some questions to ask and safety tips to consider.
Volunteer Driver Programs
Developing and increasing community based mobility options are vital to help individuals successfully transition from driving. Volunteer driver programs are viable alternative transportation options that can accommodate the unmet mobility needs of our aging population, in both rural and urban communities across the state. The National Volunteer Transportation Center provides many educational materials and other resources to help promote and support volunteer transportation including volunteer driver programs.
Oftentimes questions about liability concerns frequently arise
early-on in discussions among organizations who are considering starting
a volunteer driver program and with individuals themselves who are
concerned become volunteers. To help address this issue, the
Safe Mobility for Life Coalition has released their
Volunteer
Driver Liability Report: An Issue, Not a Barrier in Florida. It is
our goal to help organizations and individuals understand the potential
issues of volunteer driver liability to ensure that it does not become a
barrier to establishing volunteer driving programs as a viable
transportation option for older adults within their communities.
- Beverly Foundation Legacy Volunteer Driver Programs
- National Volunteer Transportation Center (Community Transportation Association of America)
- The Florida Alliance for Information and Referral Services sponsors the Florida 2-1-1 Network, a cooperative effort with the United Way of Florida that provides access to help lines and other information in a majority of Florida counties.
- Elder Help Line is the Florida Information and Referral service for elders. It includes county by county information and phone numbers.
- The AAA Foundation's "Other Ways to Get Around" report.
- In January 2010, The Federal Transit Administration published a report "Attracting Senior Drivers to Public Transportation: Issues and Concerns".
- Current Practices Used by Travel Trainers for Seniors highlights the efforts of travel trainers to provide customized, individualized services for older adults.
- TCRP Report 168: Travel Training for Older Adults. Part I: A Handbook (TCRP Report 168, Transit Cooperative Research Program, 2014). Intended as a manual for transportation, social service, aging, and training professionals that describes successful travel training practices and how to implement these practices in various community situations.
