6 minute read
What is Urban Air Mobility?
By: Clint Harper, C.M. and Terry Lloyd, AAE
The more accurate question is, what can Urban Air Mobility (UAM) be? If you enter the question “What is Urban Air Mobility?” into a search engine, you get a variety of answers. Let us use the Federal Aviation Administration’s definition as a starter. The FAA defines UAM as a safe and efficient “aviation transportation system that will use highly automated aircraft that will operate and transport passengers or cargo at lower altitudes within urban and suburban areas. “This definition lays out some common factors found in other definitions, such as “automated aircraft”, and transport of “passengers and cargo”. Other definitions insist the aircraft must be pilotless, and/or the aircraft must use Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) and some even insist the aircraft must be powered by electricity only. Our favorite out of the bunch is simply “the next generation of aviation”. This definition leaves things wide open, as befitting a large new system in the beginning stages that will be incorporating a number of new technologies across a wide area, including propulsion, remote or automated operation, and traffic control, to name a few. It even takes “urban” out of the definition.
The truth is that Urban Air Mobility will be something different for every community. UAM first emerged as a solution to congestion, but this idea was quickly disbanded. Decades of transportation planning have taught us that adding a new lane of traffic only exacerbates the problem. While this phenomenon is widely understood on our highways, the underlying principle based on the theory of induced demand- additional capacity will attract more vehicles- holds true for any new capacity project, whether on our roadways, rail lines, or in the air. Once this claim was properly debunked, it seemed that UAM became a solution looking for a problem. Fortunately (or unfortunately), there is no shortage of transportation problems in our cities to solve.
Today in urban planning classrooms across the nation, students are learning about how cities have evolved over time. Major shifts in urban life are often triggered by transportation innovations. From quaint European cities where daily needs are clustered within walking distance of your home, to cities along ancient trade routes across the Roman Empire in Europe, or the Inca Empire in the Americas. As clocks, ship design, gyros, and celestial navigation evolved, so did port cities. Steam engine technology inspired rail cities around the world and introduced a new era in somewhat safe, and faster ocean travel. Internal combustion engines brought us the personal automobile and the interstate highway system. Modern cities in the United States emerged in the railway era, but large cities all emerged from automobile technology and the interstate system. Our largest cities are multimodal. This means that there is a combination of sea or river ports, rail hubs, and interstate connectivity. Transportation drives the economies of cities; therefore, it is important for cities to adapt to new transportation innovations. With this understanding, you are probably wondering why cities have not emerged from aviation. The truth is that they have, you just probably have not noticed. It has been slowly happening over the last 40-50 years. Urban Air Mobility is the next big transportation evolution that will define cities, but it will need a proper role, and then adequate infrastructure.
Since conventional airports will be a likely high-volume destination for UAM traffic, extensive infrastructure and revision of standard air traffic control procedures will be needed to accommodate passengers arriving at the airport via UAM vehicles. It is not hard to imagine a new “UAM terminal” coming to an airport near you. The promise of Urban Air Mobility will be realized through the opportunity to bring travelers closer to their final destination via the air. For this to happen, many are envisioning new downtown facilities called vertiports. While vertiports are important because they will be strategically built near destinations, we cannot forget about the origins, or where the trip begins. Many smaller communities cannot afford to build new vertiports, but they often have a small airport nearby. These small airports exist nearly everywhere across the U.S. In Florida alone, there are 131 public airports. In a much less densely populated state, such as Utah, there are 46 airports. These airports can be gateways for smaller communities to connect with other areas to provide access to jobs, education, commerce, recreation, tourism, or to larger airports to connect with cross-country flights. Most importantly, these small airports have often existed since around the time of World War II, meaning that many are already well integrated with the FAA’s National Airspace System for all-weather, day and nighttime operations, and federal and state funding.
In the near term, UAM will start with piloted aircraft, some will be new designs with vertical take-off and landing capabilities, others will resemble traditional aircraft that will require a runway. Infrastructure will be needed at existing airports, such as new electrical systems to charge aircraft between flights. There will need to be transportation connectivity between the airport and the traveler’s ultimate destination, the “final mile”. This can be done via shuttle buses, rail connections, ridehailing services, or even via electric bikes or scooters. The FAA and NASA are working to understand weather reporting demands for new aircraft operating at airports and at new downtown vertiports where micro-weather patterns created by high-rise buildings are less understood. Finally, the FAA is working on vertiport and airport design standards to mitigate risk for both the operator and the airport/vertiport sponsor. Where risk cannot be acceptably mitigated through infrastructure design, the responsibility will fall on the operator to develop operating specifications that account for this risk.
Where cities in older European countries were built for people and pedestrians, cities in the United States were built for cars. This has introduced many inequities for residents that have fallen on hard times and cannot afford a car, or for elderly or disabled people that simply cannot drive. As UAM evolves, cities are working to understand how to integrate this new mode of travel in a way that keeps us from repeating past transportation mistakes.
When UAM was first introduced, it was promoted as the solution to congestion and harmful emissions. That has proved wrong over time, but city leaders are now starting to understand that there is no one solution. The true solution will have many components and UAM can be a critical part of the solution, providing more transportation options, new jobs, access to medical care, and ending isolation. One thing is certain, we will all find out what UAM will be very soon.
