Uber Doesn't Work for an 84-Year-Old

The first time it goes wrong, it's usually not the driving.

It's that the app updated and the button moved. It's standing outside a medical building at 4:40 on a Thursday with a phone at nine percent, watching a car cancel. It's the pharmacy bag, the walker, and the door that needs a hand.

Rideshare is a good product. It's built for someone with a charged phone, a flexible schedule, and no trouble getting from the curb to the front door. Plenty of older adults fit that description perfectly. Plenty don't — and the ones who don't tend to discover it on the return trip.

What usually goes wrong

The wait is the hard part, not the ride. Going is fine, because you can plan it. Coming back is where it falls apart: the appointment ran long, the driver is eight minutes out, and there's nowhere good to stand.

The door isn't included. Rideshare is curb to curb. For some people the last thirty feet — the steps, the bags, the lock — are the part that actually needed help.

Nobody's keeping track. A driver drops someone off and drives away. They don't know whether the appointment happened, what the doctor said, or that this is the third one this month.

There's no one to ask. A lot of people come out of a visit with a new prescription and a piece of paper they'd like a second opinion on. Not a medical one. Just someone to say it out loud to.

What's actually available in Austin

If a ride really is all you need, don't buy anything more than that. Start here:

• Drive a Senior matches volunteer drivers with older adults across Central Texas, free of charge. They've been doing it since 1985. If the need is a handful of rides a month, this is very often the right answer and it costs nothing.
• MetroAccess is Capital Metro's ADA paratransit — shared-ride, door-to-door, for people whose disabilities keep them off regular bus and rail. It takes an eligibility application and advance scheduling, so apply before you need it rather than the week you do.
• Capital Metro's Reduced Fare ID cuts standard fares for anyone 65 or older, Medicare card holders, and riders with qualifying disabilities. The card is good for two years and is worth having even if it goes unused for a while.
• CARTS covers the counties around Austin where Capital Metro doesn't run — relevant if your parent is out toward Bastrop, Elgin or Lockhart. All their buses and vans are wheelchair accessible, and they run a separate medical transportation service for Medicaid and Texas Health Steps riders.
• Austin Parks and Recreation runs senior transportation for adults 60 and over as part of its senior support services.

Commute Solutions keeps a fuller list at commutesolutions.com, including veterans' transport and driver evaluation programs.

Any of these can solve a ride. None of them solve the other thing.

When it isn't really about the ride

Sometimes the appointment is the reason for the call and not the reason for the worry.

A ride once a month is a logistics problem, and it has cheap answers. But if you find yourself arranging four of them, and then wondering how the last one went, and then calling to ask whether she ate — the ride was never the thing.

That's a different need: someone in the week, regularly, who happens to also drive.

How we handle it

We're not a ride service. It's worth being clear about that, because the two get confused and the difference matters.

ThereWhen is a regular visit from the same companion. Appointments happen inside those visits — we pick up, we go, we come back, and the walk to the door is part of it. Tell us in advance and the visit gets built around the appointment.

What that buys you that a ride doesn't: the person driving knows your mother. They know she always wants to stop at H-E-B afterward. And after the visit you get an update saying how it went, so you aren't reconstructing the afternoon from a phone call.

If your parent needs a lift to the airport next Tuesday, book a car. That's the right tool and it costs eleven dollars.