WASHINGTON — It’s a bird … it’s a plane … no, it’s an air taxi, and it’s coming in to land soon, leaving cities from coast to coast scrambling to get ready for airborne urban travel.
Nobody yet knows precisely what an air taxi even is, how it may look, or who will get to use it; however the cities see it coming and want to be ready for takeoff.
None of the small, electric aircraft in development have yet won full U.S. regulatory approval, but the process is underway – with some companies vying to fly as early as next year.
“This is coming sooner than a lot of people think,” said Jacques Coulon, mobility innovation manager for the city of Orlando in Florida.
Taken together, the prototypes are far from uniform, with a host of competing designs for rotors and wings; some are flown by in-vehicle pilots, others operate autonomously.
“While we haven’t gotten an application, we’ll probably get one sooner than later, and we want to make sure we’re prepared,” said Coulon to Context.
The balancing officials, such as Coulon, have to do weighs possible benefits—the local economy, jobs, connectivity—against drawbacks like noise and environmental degradation, as well as concerns about safety or fairness.
“What incremental changes can we make that allow for this new, innovative mobility option to occur in a way that won’t negatively impact our existing neighbourhoods,” he said.
They are known as electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs. The vision is that small, electric machines can provide both local and regional transit, emergency or medical service, and more besides.
Air taxis would run in quieter, less-pollution ways than current means of air travel, their backers argue, thus allowing for more seamless integration into urban life.
New York, Paris, and Dubai are already constructing “vertiports” where taxis could take off and land vertically, according to Maria Alonso, the head of autonomous mobility for the World Economic Forum.
She said some cities in the US, China, and UAE are leading getting ready, with more attention required from the local policymakers.
“There’s a real driving demand for this to happen quickly,” said Brittney Kohler, legislative director for transport and infrastructure at the National League of Cities umbrella group.
Cities see an upside in terms of better connectivity but are also wary about who will benefit.
“We want to make sure we aren’t creating the same mistakes [as we did] with aviation.that really annoyed communities and caused a lot of health and mental health impacts,” she said.
Pros and cons
The Federal Aviation Administration last year published a “blueprint” for the industry that foresees these aircraft being first used similarly to helicopters, before progressing to flying air taxis between airports and vertiports in city centres, with corridors becoming increasingly complex at some later date.
The regulator foresees this happening by 2028, although a few innovators hope for a lots earlier launch.
Air taxis, for all their potential to “transform” cities, could also be “very disruptive” to city life, said Adam Cohen, a senior research manager with the University of California’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center.
While local governments will have significant say over where they can take off and land, the air is controlled by the federal government.
Still, says Cohen, cities have plenty of levers they can pull—like limiting hours of operation—to address local concerns and will play a key role in ensuring that a sector develops fairly.
“The public sector can play a really important role in trying to encourage equitable outcomes based on where infrastructure is located,” he said.
“Also looking at policies that could potentially broaden the potential benefits to the largest slice of society – supporting public good-use cases like emergency response and aeromedical use.”
‘Change how cities are defined’
Air mobility companies are already working closely with cities—preparing for federal approval.
It’s an autonomous electric four-passenger aircraft, and Wisk Aero seeks approval with an eye toward launching in Los Angeles, Houston, and cities beyond.
“Ground transportation is becoming more and more congested, and we need solutions to transition to sustainability, while also finding new tools for cities to be able to serve their residents in the best possible way,” said Emilien Marchand, head of local city partnerships at the company.
The firm aims to begin flights this decade, with fares on a par with a luxury car share service like Uber Black.
“It’s going to be a whole new definition of city,” he said. “If you think about it now, it will take you 15 minutes to cover 30 to 50 miles; it really extends the radius of what your metro is.”
A study by California State University last year reviewed what air taxis may do to Long Beach, California, and concluded that a six-vertiport system—eventually expanding to 20—would mean more than 900 jobs in operations and nearly $30 million in new, annual taxes.
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said in an email that the sector has the potential to “continue to drive jobs, grow tourism and forge new connections”.
The American Association of Airport Executives researched four airports and found that Blockly integrating air taxis within existing airports “is feasible and that vertiport operations could begin in the near future and ramp up”.
Noisy, risky, intrusive?
Cities like Los Angeles are also trying to demonstrate the technology to residents in an effort to assuage concerns.
“Concerns about altitude in flight, the lack of active air traffic control, the noise from flyovers” have all been raised, said Francis Pollara, founder of Urban Movement Labs, a public-private partnership working with the city on preparations.
Pollara helped the city create a public simulation space to model the noise level of different aircraft in an urban space.
Critics say the noise level is not the only unknown.
The city of Middleton, Wisconsin, wrote last month that the “FAA blueprint appears to give little to no regard for the quality of life, noise and safety concerns of people on the ground.”
That’s a concern for Arline Bronzaft, a professor emerita at City University of New York who has studied the disturbance that el-evated-train noise can cause in learning.
“A selling point is these make less noise, so it doesn’t intrude on people,” she said, but that benefit could be offset by the increased frequency of any air service.
“Well, with greater frequency in still-audible sounds, it might just make it more intrusive. We simply don’t know.”