Regional Sky Transit

Regional Sky Transit (RST) is a novel proposal for a mass-scale transportation system made feasible by autonomous electric air vehicles.

RST would offer safe, affordable, emission-free flights of up to 150 miles in ultra-quiet, autonomous “Sky Taxis” that offer trip speeds about 4 times faster than by car. Using high-proximity pocket airparks that are roughly the size of a soccer field, RST would connect communities across urban mega-regions. RST users would pay no bridge toll, fuel cost, parking fees or tolls, and would have no waiting for ticketing, security or boarding. Riders could reserve transit via mobile app and board a two-seat Sky Taxi and be airborne in under 2 minutes. While airborne, riders would enjoy a panoramic field of view of the landscape passing below and work or play using free onboard Wi-Fi.

One possible design for a two-person Sky Taxi
Another possible design

RST would complement surface transit as well as airline travel with pocket airparks co-located at bus, rail and major airline hubs. The capacity and distribution of RST could effectively extend last mile travel from the limited string of destinations of any rail system without the high cost of adding tracks, for RST’s highways in the sky would cost nothing. Importantly, in residential areas, Sky Taxi noise would be imperceptible outside the airpark perimeter fence. Sky Taxis would be available 6 AM to 11 PM every day to all segments of the population: workers, students, and tourists, regardless of age or capability.

Highly distributed pocket airparks would be business magnets for tenants like UPS and Starbucks that would both pay rent and enhance local sales tax revenues. Urban greenbelts would make more sense as people sought to live and work within walking distance of sustainable pocket airparks. The ultra-short runway Sky Taxis could reach and supply remote areas without having to build roads and bridges, and could aid evacuation and relief efforts in case of natural disaster.

To realize these substantial environmental, governmental and societal benefits will first require bringing about a mission-capable Sky Taxi. In California’s Silicon Valley area alone there are numerous startup companies in a headlong rush to do so. These include Airbus, Google and Aurora Flight Sciences. Each company is designing its own version of a Sky Taxi without coordination with any standards for community noise, airpark size/runway length, system capacity, charging stations, etc.

Just as it was crucial to set standards for the gauge of early railroad tracks, standards will be essential to rapidly implementing community-acceptable RST, particularly noise standards, because they will dictate both Sky Taxi and airpark design.

Caught in Traffic

Despite heroic and informed government efforts, public transit has consistently failed to take enough cars off the road to eliminate surface gridlock. Public transit is expensive to build and requires fare subsidies in order to win meaningful levels of ridership. ARB Board Member Dan Sperling, the Founder of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis, in his book Two Billion Cars (p 176) clearly states, “Virtually all [government] attempts to get Americans out of their cars have failed.”

NHTS and DOT data clearly show an inexorable slowing of average commute trip speeds, which in metro areas have now fallen to just 22 mph when the 43% uncertainty time is included. This imposes a huge cost to both productivity and GHG emissions. Climate change and air quality concerns increasingly demand that transportation converts to electric vehicles and stop wasting fuel in gridlock.

Tom Vanderbilt, in his book “Traffic” (p 166) points out that “. . . in a world of bottlenecks, small changes can have big effects (a 5 percent drop in traffic, it is said, can increase speeds by 50 percent …” Herein lies one great promise of RST. At 10% ridership of inter-county travelers, emission-free RST could undo surface gridlock and quadruple trip speeds for its users—a huge win-win. And, compared to BART tracks that cost $1B per mile, the 4-times-faster RST would use ‘highways in the sky’ that cost $0 per mile and yet could haul more people than BART.

Further Reading

You can read more about Regional Sky Transit in these AIAA papers