Urban Air Mobility — Is it for you ?
By: Alon Ascher
Tags: Smart Cities, City Planning, Future, Urban Air Mobility, Future Of Transportation

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has the potential to transform every aspect of our lives through the creation of a 3D urban landscape. Recent technology developments such as battery capacity, lightweight materials, communication and autonomy, enable the creation of new kinds of aircrafts. These aim to provide new services while flying at high density and low altitudes — above metropolitan areas and underneath conventional commercial air routes (0–3000ft). Swarms of cargo drones will deliver packages faster and at lower costs to hospitals, offices, and homes. Quiet electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircrafts will create a new and faster way to travel in congested cities. Nevertheless, our current urban and air spaces are not designed to handle these complex operations.

Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric from Pexels

In recent years, it is becoming clearer that technology is not the only barrier in implementing complex systems like UAM in cities. Public acceptance, regulation and profitable business models set the implementation pace (autonomous vehicles set excellent example). Given these challenges and vast differences between urban areas, UAM is not an appropriate solution for all cities.

Start with WHY ?

When exploring an UAM future, the first step major city decision-makers should take is seriously considering— Is it for me?

Just as Simon Sinek says, start with the Why. Why should we have UAM in our city? Or in system design terms— what are the most important needs for this system? What are the city’s major pain points we would like to solve?

Reducing congestion is an obvious reason, but it’s not the only one. Development and connectivity of suburban areas, socio-economic equality, distant education enablement, and improving health or security services in specific neighborhoods. These are all very important to city planners and UAM has the potential to deliver them.

The city airspace is an asset, and a very limited one. Therefore, it can not deliver a magic solution to all needs — it should be utilized where it can provide a decent alternative compared to other solutions.

Photo by NASA

No magic solutions

The second step is to understand whether UAM in a specific city might solve its unique needs. Now the complexity begins. Every city or metropolis possesses unique elements that affect the UAM system. These might include: available air space and air traffic constraints, typical weather, available ground infrastructure for landing pads, existing transportation networks, noise restrictions and unique regulations. Every case is a whole new problem and should be addressed accordingly.

On the solutions side, current market leaders such as Uber Elevate, Amazon, Airbus and others are developing UAM systems based on their assets and expertise. These designs serve different use cases and capabilities. For example, Uber Elevate leveraged their existing ride hailing dominance in many cities around the globe. Their solution is based on Hub-to-Hub transportation: an Uber cab takes you from your location to the nearest air hub, from there you take a short flight to another air hub closest to your destination, and then another cab to the final destination. This is a good solution for specific use cases and cities. There is no one size fits all UAM system that can provide every city with a solution to their needs. Therefore, cities should examine a multi-system utilization based on prioritization.

How?

The challenge is to develop new planning methodologies, tools and models that are able to find the optimal linkage between the UAM circle:

These data-driven methodologies and tools should measure UAM operation expected performance and impact. Market leaders develop these tools, but they have their own agenda and interests inside them— it’s a bit like letting Henry Ford design the road system and traffic light programs.

I’m currently working on this challenge among with other research groups around the world. Although the answers are far from final, and it will take some time until UAM becomes commonly used, I suggest decision-makers in major cities focus now on Why and Where we should implement UAM. This would help guide the whole UAM community, and hopefully help to obtain public acceptance due to the strong connection between the UAM system and the needs of the citizens.