Opinion – Claudio Bernardes: Urban air mobility and congestion reduction

Air travel through urban space is not exactly a novelty, but technological advances, mainly related to the use of drones to transport goods and people, could start a revolution in urban mobility. But will this new MUA (Urban Air Mobility) model, with electric take-off and vertical landing vehicles, reduce ground congestion?

As the MUA does not yet exist, there is no data and information about its functioning. Therefore, alternative approaches to study this phenomenon, analysis of comparable modes (such as helicopters), theoretical assessments and simulations should be used.

In order to assess the likely demand for MUA and simulate the impact on the existing land transport system, researchers from the department of civil and geoenvironmental engineering at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, developed a model to study the access and exit of so-called “vertiports” for urban aerial mobility, with vertical takeoff and landing.

In the context of the MUA, the inbound trip is the segment between the origin and the first “vertiport”, while the outbound trip is the segment between the final “vertiport” and the destination. The demanding infrastructure requirements suggest that the “vertiports” would be installed very sparsely across the city. Therefore, access and egress can be a substantial part of MUA travel time.​

A test scenario was developed for the year 2030 in the Munich region, with a medium-density MUA network with 74 “vertiports”. This network includes densely populated areas, employment centers and transport hubs. It is assumed that by 2030 the current disadvantages of autonomous vehicles (VA) will be resolved and they will be integrated into land transport.

In this test scenario, the MUA fleet was restricted to 50 vehicles per station and boarding time was set at 10 minutes. Following the results of the proposed scenario, it was found that the highest number of take-offs and landings in a “vertiport” is 11.3 thousand and 11.5 thousand, respectively, which corresponds to eight take-offs and eight landings per minute, if the service operates 24 hours a day.

To determine the impacts of MUA on road traffic, and to verify its influence on congestion, the total kilometers traveled by vehicles in the region was estimated for the existing and test scenarios of urban air mobility. The results indicate that, for the existing scenario, the total kilometers traveled on the surface would be 49.39 million, while in the test scenario (with air mobility in operation), it would be 49.53 million kilometers — an elevation of 0. 27%.

The increase in kilometers traveled for the test scenario is not intuitive at first glance. After all, the MUA was expected to reduce car travel. However, trips in and out of “vertiports” would be made by car more often than by public transport or non-motorized modes.

Another aspect observed was that, in order to meet the demand for MUA, many air vehicles would need to be available at “vertiports”. However, there is no free space available in cities to allocate “vertiports” large enough to accommodate all the demand for air mobility.

The study’s findings indicate that, for most cases, the evaluated MUA model does not provide a reduction in travel times when access and departure times, boarding times and potential wait times are included. Given the very limited capacity of MUA vehicles and the time required to process boarding, taking off, climbing, landing, and reloading, travel time savings within an urban area will be negligible.

Thus, it is likely that the MUA with electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles will be used as a means of transport for specific purposes, replacing current helicopter flights for medical emergencies and special displacements, as they generate less noise and gas emissions than traditional helicopters. Furthermore, they could potentially become an alternative way to facilitate access to regions with limited land transport infrastructure.