UK Flying-Taxi Hub Aims to Develop Blueprint for Aerial Roads, by Christopher Jasper
Post by Joshua Herrig, JLH2208
Problem: Traffic congestion in cities causes health problems from exhaust pollution and inefficiencies of worker commutes and deliveries for goods and services for restaurants and businesses. It’s also an aesthetic blight on a city and a danger to bicycle drivers and walkers.
Solution: A hub for flying taxis and cargo drones is being built and trial operations will begin by the end of 2021 in Coventry, England, a city of 400,000 people. This will then test “aerial roads” for the taxis and cargo drones that then can be further developed and refined for efficiencies and safety. It will also be an electrical vehicle charging center.
Once the stuff of science fiction, flying taxis and logistic drones now have test pilot programs in Singapore and Florida. All of the programs hope to alleviate traffic from delivery trucks and eventually commuters.
There are still many hurdles to fully implementing flying cars into the fabric of urban life. The first problem is that these flying taxis will initially be very expensive. Another problem is safety and perceived safety. Until the program is up and running it may prove difficult to get enough people to take the flights. Also, the logistics of using the flying taxi won’t make much sense for most people who would have to drive to the hub and then commute to their destination. Also the building out of infrastructure for where these taxis and delivery drones can land needs to be fully implemented.
Despite these hurdles I hope that our future does have flying cars in it and congested highways and city roads will be a thing of the past.
Stakeholders: City government of Cambria, the company Altitude Angel, and citizens and business owners of Coventry, UK.
Implementing the technology: 1. Building the physical hub, building the flying taxis and cargo drones 2. Test flying them 3. Figuring out logistics of where best to have “aerial roads” 4. building infrastructure on where these fling taxies and cargo drones can land and take off 5. Actually running and operating the hub and taxis with real customers.
makeasmartcity 
Yes! I also hope we have flying cars in the future but of course there are many hurdles. I am really interested in the pilot program in Singapore. I can’t believe it already sold 1,000 reservations?! Can’t wait for this to start in 2023!
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Hey Josh, great article! This immediately reminded me of the Lake Nona drone airport that Annie presented on last week. I absolutely love the futuristic idea of flying cars. I think realistically though, cargo drones definitely have a higher chance of being utilized within the near future, compared to cars (since they don’t involve the high risk of human harm!). There are a few companies out there already working on flying cars, such as Aeromobil (https://www.aeromobil.com/), but like you pointed out, there are many logistical issues that need to be dealt with before the cars even take flight. I wonder how inventions like the Hyperloop would impact the investment into other quick modes of transportation like flying cars. This idea is awesome, but the scalability of it might take a long time!
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Josh- This seems like an incredible idea to reduce the traffic congestion. I always thought this to be a science fiction concept and it’s unreal that it’s only two years away from the pilot program going active.
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