A free transit program for older adults is becoming an increasingly important lifeline across Central Texas. One of the Capital Area’s Rural Transit System’s (CARTS) fastest-growing initiatives is a free ride program for older people.
Launched in June 2024 through a partnership with the local Area Agency on Aging of the Capital Area (AAACAP) and the Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG), the program was designed to help seniors reconnect with their communities after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We noticed that after COVID seniors weren’t getting back out to those congregate meal sites and weren’t going to the community centers,” said Dana Platts, the community engagement director with CARTS. “Through a partnership with local agencies, we are providing free rides to seniors 60 and above, to really anywhere they want to go, just to get them out of their houses and connected back into the communities. It has been so successful.”
This need is particularly acute in rural communities, where transportation can be a major barrier to both health care and social engagement. Studies have found that older adults in rural areas often face long travel distances and limited public transportation options. Researchers and advocates have linked those transportation gaps to missed medical appointments, reduced access to essential services, and increased social isolation. CARTS senior rides allow older adults to travel at no cost to medical appointments, grocery stores, senior centers, community programs, and other destinations, while also supporting social connections and everyday errands.
The AAACAP has long been one of the central funders and organizers of senior transit across the region, covering negotiated rates for older people across ten counties in Central Texas. Jennifer Scott, director of aging services at AAACAP, said that previous funding constraints limited free rides to medical appointments. But the CARTS program has vastly expanded transit destinations.
“The senior rides have opened up more opportunities to go see a family member, go to the doctor, church, grocery store,” Scott said. “It has expanded people’s horizons a little bit more, which gives them a higher quality of life.”
Since CARTS began tracking senior rides in June 2024, older adults have taken more than 28,000 free trips throughout the region, averaging roughly 1,230 rides each month, according to Platt.
“Rural communities just don’t have the amount of goods or services that the city has and a lot of times in some of these places their hospitals shut down and they don’t have any [local] medical care, so they’re always looking to go to neighboring counties to get medical care,” Platt said. “So we help try to make that connection with our transit services.”
Demand has accelerated in recent months. Between September 2025 and April 2026, seniors logged 12,776 CARTS trips, an average of nearly 1,600 rides per month. The strongest usage during that period came from Burnet, Hays, Bastrop, and Llano counties, which together accounted for about two-thirds of all senior rides. Bastrop County recorded 2,153 trips, placing it among the program’s busiest areas.
Rides in Bastrop County
A 2026 study examining health and transportation equity in rural counties along the U.S. 290 corridor between Houston and Austin found that many rural Texans continue to face significant barriers to healthcare, particularly seniors, people with disabilities, low-income residents, and communities of color. The research included Bastrop County, an exurban county within CARTS service area, and found that access to medical care is often limited not only by shortages of doctors and specialty services, but also by transportation challenges that require residents to travel long distances for treatment.
In Bastrop County, about 13.7% of county residents reported having a disability, with ambulatory and independent-living challenges among the most common issues affecting mobility and access to services. While vehicle ownership in Bastrop is relatively high, transportation costs, vehicle maintenance, and limited public transit options can still create barriers for lower-income households.
Senior ride programs have been filling some of these critical gaps.
“Bastrop has been one of our busiest counties for the senior rides. It has been really popular,” Platt said.
Not only has ridership grown for the free seniors program, but also for regional commuter routes and local rides. Platt said CARTS is seeing a broader shift in who uses public transit. While many riders still depend on transit for medical appointments and essential trips, growing numbers of students, workers, and other “choice riders” are using commuter and on-demand services, through CARTS Now, in Bastrop County.
“I think in the beginning it was really medical seniors and people who didn’t have transportation, so they were just desperate for public transportation,” Platt said. “We didn’t have a lot of services but as we have grown, and cities have grown, we’ve entered different types of services.”
An Aging Rural Population
But with a growing aging population, there is a concern that the demand for transit cannot be adequately met even with these expanding services.
“There’s always a true lack of funding to meet what the true need is to help,” Scott said. “As the population grows, that need is going to get higher and higher.
Rural America is aging faster than the rest of the country, creating new challenges for transportation, health care, and other essential services. In 2023, 21% of people living in rural counties were aged 65 or older, compared with 17% in metropolitan areas, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And over 66% of rural counties qualified as “older-age” counties, where at least 20% of residents are 65 or older.
Last year, proposed federal budget cuts threatened the Older Americans Act (OAA), which provides substantial funding for senior transportation services through its Title 3(b) provisions. Title 3 services, which historically make up nearly 75% of OAA funding, have offered meals, nutrition support, transportation, legal assistance, and more to millions of older people across the country.
In 2023 alone, 13.1 million one-way transportation trips were provided for older people across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2025, the proposed federal budget and restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services threatened key parts of the OAA. USAging, the national association representing and supporting the network of Area Agencies on Aging, warned about the fallout of these policies.
“The recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reorganization eliminated the umbrella agency under which the OAA has been administered for 13 years,” said USAging CEO Sandy Markwood in a statement last year. “If the proposed breakup of the programs and the elimination of major initiatives in the Act go forward, it will severely impact the ability of older adults and caregivers to get the services and supports they need to remain living at home and in the community, and it will put them at risk of facing much more costly placement in institutional settings—a situation no older adult or caregiver wants to confront unless absolutely necessary.”
The Title 3 funding was fulfilled for fiscal year 2026, but advocates worry what these attempts to limit funding will look like in future years under the Trump administration.
On a local level, many of the funding sources are county-specific, making it difficult to design and coordinate programs that span large, rural communities.
Section 5310 is a federal grant program that helps communities provide transportation for older adults and people with disabilities, funding things like accessible vehicles, medical transportation, mobility programs, and other services that improve access to rides.
“One of the things that makes rural transportation difficult is the cross-county barriers based on some of the funding sources,” Scott said. “[For example], when agencies receive 5310 funding to purchase vehicles, those vehicles may be restricted to use within a certain county because that’s what the grant covers. As a result, they can’t cross county lines to pick up people in neighboring counties.”
To create cohesive transit systems that effectively serve rural communities, many Central Texas counties collaborate on grants and invest in coordinating teams that span the region.
As Central Texas takes strides towards filling transit gaps, Scott still sees a long road ahead.
“There are solutions that are emerging,” Scott said. “But we have a long way to go.”
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