June E. Snow remembers the day in October 2003 when her 1984 Ford Tempo just would not start. Snow, then 77, knew that repairs would be costly, and that insurance payments and her AAA dues were coming due. So she walked back into her Falmouth, Maine, apartment and made the phone call she'd been dreading. She had the Tempo towed away, never to be replaced. 

Snow had long been aware she would eventually need to give up driving. Eye problems ran in her family, and Snow was already living with macular degeneration. At 70 she'd stopped driving at night and into the city, and still she found herself increasingly uncomfortable behind the wheel. "I could see the handwriting on the wall," Snow says.

But here's the thing: Months after the day Snow said goodbye to her old Tempo, her car was still getting her where she wanted to go.

That's because Snow donated her car to ITNPortland, the first affiliate of the nonprofit ride network ITNAmerica. Whenever Snow needed a ride, ITN (Independent Transportation Network) sent a car, and the cost was deducted from the value of her donation.

ITN has a singular mission: to ensure that drivers over 65 don't view giving up their car as an unhappy ending but rather as a transition to a new way of getting around. It combines a system of paid transportation services and a community support network. 

Katherine Freund, the 5-foot-tall transportation activist who founded the network 10 years ago, says bluntly: "I'm a little person with a big idea."

And the idea is getting bigger. With the number of older drivers growing, transportation programs are multiplying. Four communities—Charleston, S.C.; Orlando, Fla.; Santa Monica, Calif. and the Trenton-Princeton area of New Jersey—will roll out ITN programs this fall. Other towns are waiting in the wings. In Congress, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, R, introduced a bill in February to encourage more towns to establish ITN programs.

How does ITN work for Snow? One typical winter day, she has an appointment with her ophthalmologist on the far side of neighboring Portland, a 10-minute drive. She called ITN the previous day and set up a ride (ITN charges less for rides arranged in advance). Snow can get a ride from ITN 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Last year 600 people took 15,250 trips within a 15-mile radius of Portland. There's a surcharge for trips after 9 p.m., although like most ITN patrons she rarely travels late at night. Still, "it's always there if I need it," Snow says, and knowing that is psychologically essential for many riders as they transition from life with a car to life without.

For Snow, as for many older Americans, giving up her car was traumatic—a seemingly irrevocable loss of freedom in a country where mobility is paramount. "It used to be that I could just get in the car and go to the shops and talk to the people I knew, and that would cheer me up," Snow says.

Though she's now not as free to get around as she once was, ITN helps her remain part of the community, including attending Senior College classes at the nearby University of Southern Maine. 

Right on time, a car pulls up to the apartment complex where she has lived for 19 years. The driver who rings her doorbell is Richard Bruns, 68, who started with ITN five years ago. "I was bored and just putting mileage on my rocker," he says. 

Bruns escorts Snow, his only passenger at the moment, to the car, and the pair head off. They swing by a shopping plaza to mail a letter, then after telling a ribald joke, Snow arrives for her appointment. 

Snow typically uses the service once or twice each week, including trips for shopping. Like 28 other business members of ITN who reward patronage, the chain store where she buys groceries pays $1 into her account for each ride she arranges to the store. ITN's fundraising in the community also keeps ride costs down. 

Snow's annual membership fee runs $35, and the cost of each ride is based on a flat $3 fee plus $1 per mile. When ITN sold her car, it credited her account for the entire resale price, giving her a travel nest egg to start with. Snow drew down that credit after a time, and now rebuilds her account by calling the office and adding funds by credit card. 

At her eye doctor appointment, Snow finishes early and calls the ITN dispatcher to ask if Bruns is available before her scheduled return time. "I turned around and he was there," she says. "I think he likes my jokes." 

On the return trip, Bruns and Snow pick up and drop off another ITN member along the way, earning Snow (and the other rider) a 15 percent discount for ride-sharing. When they pull up in front of Snow's door, she doesn't worry about fishing out her wallet because the fare has been automatically debited from her ITN account. It will show up on the monthly statement she receives. 

Bruns ensures that Snow gets inside safely. "You feel pretty super getting that kind of service," she says.