Getting around

Volunteer driver programmes and paratransit are free or nearly free in most counties, and almost nobody knows they exist.

Official source the real list is public and we send you to it

Two services that already exist, and are free or nearly free

Before you price anything: in most of the country there are two ride services your parent may already be entitled to, and neither is advertised to families.

ADA paratransit

If a public bus or train runs near her and she cannot use it because of a disability, the transit agency generally must also run door-to-door paratransit. The federal rules are specific enough to hold someone to:

• Where. Corridors three-quarters of a mile either side of every fixed route, plus a three-quarter-mile radius around the ends of routes and around rail stations.
• When. The same hours and the same days as the fixed route service.
• Next day. They must schedule a trip at any requested time on a particular day in response to a request made the previous day — and they may not push the pickup more than one hour before or after the time she asked for.
• Cost. The fare may be no more than twice the fare for a comparable trip on the ordinary bus.
• No rationing. The agency may not limit the service with trip caps, waiting lists for eligible riders, or substantial numbers of missed and late trips.

Source: 49 CFR 37.131, service criteria for complementary paratransit. Checked 2026-08-10. What an individual agency delivers is a separate question from what it owes; the ombudsman for that is the agency's own complaint process and the Federal Transit Administration.

Apply before you need it. Eligibility is decided by the transit agency, usually with a form and sometimes an in-person assessment, and it takes weeks. The day after a hospital discharge is the wrong day to start.

Medicaid transport

If your parent is on Medicaid, rides to medical appointments are not an extra. A state Medicaid plan must “ensure necessary transportation for beneficiaries to and from providers”. Many states run it through a broker, and what is provided can include wheelchair vans, taxis, stretcher cars and bus passes.

Sources: 42 CFR 431.53 (assurance of transportation) and 42 CFR 440.170(a). Checked 2026-08-10.

So if she is missing appointments for want of a ride and she is on Medicaid, this is a phone call, not a purchase. Her Medicaid plan or your Area Agency on Aging will name the broker.

Medicare does not pay for the ride

This one costs families money every year. Part B covers ground ambulance when travelling any other way could endanger her health, and it will cover non-emergency ambulance transport only where a doctor has written that it is medically necessary. A ride to a routine clinic appointment is neither of those things.

Source: Medicare, ambulance services. Checked 2026-08-10. Some Medicare Advantage plans include a limited number of rides as an extra benefit — plan by plan, and worth one call.

Volunteer drivers, which almost nobody knows about

Transportation is one of the services funded through the Older Americans Act and organised locally, and in a great many counties that means a volunteer driver programme: neighbours, church groups, retired people with a car and a Tuesday morning. Often free, often with a suggested donation, usually with a waiting list.

Start at the Eldercare Locator or 1-800-677-1116, and ask for transportation options by name.

When you ask, use their vocabulary, because these three phrases mean three different services and the difference decides whether the trip works:

Rideshare, and its two failure modes

An ordinary rideshare account solves this for plenty of families, at a price. Two things break it. It assumes a smartphone, an account and a card — solvable, because family can book on her behalf and some services take phone bookings. And the driver will not help her out of the chair, will not carry the walker, and will not wait outside the clinic for forty minutes.

Good supplement. Not a plan for someone who cannot stand unaided.

The car keys

This is the hardest conversation on the whole site, and it is not really about driving. It is about being the person who decides where you go.

• Start from what she wants to keep doing — church, the store, her sister's — and solve those, rather than opening with the licence. A person offered a replacement argues less than a person offered a loss.
• Ask her doctor to raise it. The same sentence lands differently from a clinician than from a daughter, and it takes the fight out of the family.
• Get a driving evaluation. Occupational therapists trained in driver rehabilitation assess it properly, on the road. That replaces an argument with an assessment — and it sometimes comes back with adaptations and a yes, which is a result nobody in the family could have delivered.
• Know your state's process for reporting an unsafe driver to the licensing authority, and whether physicians there may report, before you need it.
• Have the replacement ready first. Taking the keys from someone with no other way to the store does not solve the problem, it moves it — and it is the fastest route to a parent who stops leaving the house at all.

What to ask any transport service before you rely on it

• How far ahead must we book, and can we book a standing weekly trip?
• Curb to curb, door to door, or door through door?
• Can you take a wheelchair, a walker, an oxygen cylinder?
• Can someone ride with her, and does that cost extra?
• What happens if the appointment overruns and she misses the return?
• What does a trip cost, is there a cap, and which areas do you cover?