styles as well as the teleworking population, public-private cooperation measures to promote the commoditization of teleworking centers, and hosting seminars designed to spread and promote the adoption of teleworking by companies.

## ③ Promotion of Transport Services to Support Child-rearing

A guidebook was published for service manners towards taxi drivers that provide transport services for child-rearing support from the perspective of ensuring safety during school commutes to meet the demands to use taxis as part of transport services for child-rearing support to shuttle children to and from their houses and childcare centers/schools.

## (2) Creating a Relaxed and Safe Environment for Children to Grow

To ensure the safety and comfort of children and other park users, various facility administrators are made aware of “Guidelines for Safety of Playground Equipment in City Parks (Revised)” and “Pool Safety Standards Guidelines” and programs such as the Social Capital Development Integrated Grant provide focused support to local governments for safety and comfort measures of park facilities.

## 3 Ageing Society Measures

## (1) Creating a Living Environment for the Elderly to Live Comfortably

The Silver Housing Project provides a package including the supply of public housing and other accessible facilities, life support advisors to counsel daily living needs, and emergency response services and as of 2011 is implemented at 882 housing projects (23,679 housing units).

Also, promotion projects for the stabilization of elderly housing support pioneering living and town planning measures for the elderly as well as redeveloping public rental housing projects as the center of regional welfare among other measures. In addition to this public rental housing is being utilized to support coordination with group homes, $ ^{Note 1} $ welfare, caring, and other services.

## (2) Providing Transport Services that Meet the Needs of an Ageing Society

In order to respond to the demand for the transportation disadvantaged such as the elderly and disabled to use hospitals and other care facilities, the implementation of welfare taxis $ ^{Note 2} $ is being promoted and as of the end of FY 2011, 15,092 vehicles are being operated. Also, the Investment Subsidy to Ensure the Procurement, Maintenance and Improvement Regional Public Transportation is being utilized to support the implementation of welfare taxis needed in regional areas and from FY 2012, universal design taxis that are easy for the elderly and various people are granted preferential measures regarding motor vehicle tonnage tax and vehicle excise tax if the vehicle meets standard specifications and is certified by government. Also, under the revised “Road Transportation Act,” to ensure transportation means necessary for the daily living of regional residents, if services by bus or taxi companies are deemed difficult to provide and the parties of the regional residents agree to the need for private fee-based passenger transport, prefectural governments can operate prefectural fee-based transport or NPOs and other organizations can provide fee-based welfare transport or fee-based transport to isolated areas based on registration and as of the end of FY 2011, 2,959 organizations are implementing such services.

## 4 Promoting the Support of Pedestrian Travel

To create an accessible environment where everyone including the elderly and disabled can readily take part in activities toward a universal society, it is important to promote things from the perspective of soft measures and study groups including outside experts are used to utilize Information Communication Technology (ICT) that can be used for accessible