Pink Pick-Up: Age-friendly transport – on-demand and door-to-door sustainable mobility services

Oslo instigated a door-to-door, on-demand mobility pilot for older people as part of the political commitment from the city government to become an age-friendly city. The city administration and the publicly owned transport company Ruter developed the pilot in order to increase mobility and well-being in day-to-day life. The Pink Pick-Up mobility pilot is a direct result of a co-creation workshop with the target group of senior citizens aged 67 or older. The age-friendly pilot service named "Rosa Busser" (named Pink Pick-Up in English) after the colour of the fleet used for this particular service, has been very well received by the target group with an astounding 86 per cent satisfaction rate among the users. Two out of three say that the pilot service meets their needs very well. Half of the users report increased mobility and ease of mobility compared to other, existing mobility solutions. During the period December 2017–January 2019 well over 20.000 trips were made with the Pink Pick-Up. The pilot service has demonstrated that older people get out more and are more socially active, which in return has increased self-perceived well-being, sense of freedom, and increased quality of life among the users. The pilot has also acted as powerful opportunity to put senior citizen’s needs on top of the political and societal agenda while also prioritizing environmental sustainability and social impact. A greater demand for mobility services combined with a rapidly changing society requires forward-looking cities and service providers to look for new service and operation models. The next step in the beta phase of the Pink Pick-Up service is to achieve a sustainable model with long-term financing that supports the overall goals of innovative and sustainable mobility that increase quality of life and mobility freedom, and decrease environmental and climatic impacts.