Seniors Need Next Mobility. Now.
I saw an ad for Uber the other day, the one in which an elderly man takes an Uber to hang out with his friends at a diner. The young driver chatted with his customer during the ride and helped him out of the car when they reached his destination.
My first reaction was: “Wouldn’t it be great if a company like Uber or Lyft operated in the small German town where my parents live?”
My mother (88) gave up driving a few years ago but my dad (79) still has a car and often makes rather dramatic statements such as “If I have to give up the car, I might as well kill myself.” If you have aging parents and are worried about their ability to drive, you know how heated, frustrating and saddening the family discussions about possibly giving up this final grand beacon of freedom and independence can be.
How brilliant and easy it would be to have a tech startup create the solution to end the parents-should-give-up-driving-discussions once and for all.
But then I wondered: “Who told the older gentleman in the ad about Uber? Who installed it on their phone? Who taught them how to use a smartphone in general and the Uber app in particular?” You see, I live in Missoula, Montana, 5000 miles away from my parents. My mother refuses to use any kind of mobile phone and while my father was able to understand the principles of WhatsApp, he frequently sends messages to the wrong recipient, which has caused some awkwardness, to say the least.
When I talk to my colleagues about Next Mobility, our conversations rarely center around seniors.
And when that topic does come up, I get excited about the fact that autonomous cars will probably be around when I can no longer drive myself, so it won’t be an issue for me. I don’t have any children, so nobody will challenge me when the time comes, so that’s a good thing. But that also means nobody might be around to show me how to install the necessary apps (will we still call them that?) on the necessary device (will it still be smartphones?).
We are so accustomed to design for digital natives. How can we provide the same mobility services to the people who might need them most but don’t know how to access them?
This is not, of course a question that nobody has asked before. And it is not the only, and maybe not the most important question one has to ask. The other one is: Where is the money? Ride-hailing as a solution for seniors and people with disabilities is being discussed widely in Germany and here in the US. Small communities and larger cities both have a stake here, wanting people to continue to live there, shop there, dine there. However, when we at Next Mobility Lab talk to entities such as Deutsche Bahn or BMW/Mercedes-Benz mobility branch reachnow, we hear that there is no profit to be made. Which means that communities have to subsidize the service, or it needs to be set up as a non-profit from the start.
Many communities already try new things
Here, in my little Rocky Mountain town of 100,000 the City of Missoula has decided that public transportation is a priority. In 2015, all city buses became free to use (and all of them have had free Wi-Fi onboard since 2011, I might add). Zero-Fare is sponsored by corporate partners and in the first 12 months alone, ridership increased by 40%. Compare that to the almost 20 Euros my parents would have to pay to take the bus from Taunusstein to Wiesbaden, the closest city, a 10 km ride.
The small town of Wittlich, Germany, subsidizes an on-demand bus service provided by Deutsche Bahn startup IOKI, which has proven to be successful. IOKI was also able to establish on-demand electric shuttles in parts of Hamburg.
The city of Taunusstein, where my parents live, established “Mitfahrbänke” (Ride-Share-Benches) in 2017. Blue benches were setup in the different communities and on a sign-post you can select your destination. Drivers who are going the same way can stop and help a neighbor out. The system has been so successful that other communities in the region have copied it.
Non-profits fill a void
In Portland, Oregon, the private non-profit organization Ride Connection works with volunteers to offer public transit training (I don’t know that my parents could even figure out which bus to take if they were willing and able to regularly pay the 20 Euros) and door-to-door rides for any purpose.
The “any purpose” seems to be important here, because it seems like there is a profit to be made when it comes to transporting seniors to medical appointments.
For-profits find the profitable parts
Otherwise neither Lyft Healthcare nor Uber Health would have ventured into the space in 2018. For healthcare providers that are offering the service to their patients (they organize the ride and pay for it), it is a matter of reducing no-shows and reducing the associated cost.
I know that my parents’ health insurance covers some healthcare transportation, like a taxi that takes my father to see his Parkinson’s specialist once a year. That’s great, but I know that their social isolation also plays a large role in their wellbeing and just getting out to meet friends for coffee from time to time would be a tremendous gain for my mother.
Here at Next Mobility Lab, we are currently consulting several German cities, which are interested in establishing an on-demand ride service to connect to the outlying communities.
And we are always interested in new ideas. If you know of any other noteworthy initiatives, please add them in the comments. If you are an advocate, an entrepreneur, a city planner, or just a person with a great idea, please get in touch.
