BEIJING, November 12 (TMTPOST) — Eastern China’s Hangzhou city has created its first batch of brick-and-mortar cab-hailing stations for the elderly in the Zhanongkou Residential Compound of Shangcheng District, which allows elderly residents to conveniently hail cabs online via one scan of QR code at the station.

Source: Visual China

In addition to the initiative, China Population Welfare Foundation and Amap co-created a Digital Mobility Service Guide for the Elderly, which is designed to help the elderly population use relevant services. Local residential communities have given out the service manuals to the elderly residents for free and provided face-to-face tutorials.

Advised by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China’s Ageing Office, China Population Welfare Foundation and Amap started the Mobility Service for the Elderly initiative. The initiative aims to build 10,000 physical cab-hailing stations across the country and provide ten million subsidy packages for elderly passengers going to hospitals every year. 

China Population Welfare Foundation and Amap also published a survey report on the elderly population’s commuting situations in ten major Chinese cities. According to the survey report, only 34% of the respondents had used a map application on their smartphone before while most of the respondents reported that they rely mostly on asking strangers for directions when in an unfamiliar environment . 75% of the surveyed only moved around within a 5km radius from their home and 21% barely left their home for more than 1km. Six in every 100 old respondents had gotten lost in a familiar environment before.

The survey report shows that there is an increasing number of elderly that tend to hail a cab when going to an unfamiliar destination or going to a far place. However, 74% of the surveyed respondents still rely on hailing a taxi by the road. Only 20% of the respondents can hail a cab via their smartphone without the assistance of others. It is worth noting that the hospital is the most frequent destination for the elderly besides transportation stations and the supermarket.

Hangzhou's physical cab-hailing stations will make life easier for the elderly as it automatically hails a cab to the station after one QR code scan.