The Terrafugia, priced at $279,000, is on pace to become the world's first commercially available "flying car". Image from Times.
Over the past week, we’ve received a lot of attention about: Driver Assisted Cars – On the Brink of a Transport Revolution? Yesterday, Christian made an insightful and thought-provoking comment about how some standard airplane technologies, such as the GPS, tend to appear in cars 15-20 years later.
But what about the ability to fly…
Science-fiction shows have long depicted flying cars as man-kind’s future transport mode of choice. With the growing concerns over issues related to oil scarcity, safety measures, increasing congestion, government regulations and much more, could the flying car be the logical next step forward from existing terrestrial forms of transport?
Automated flight controls replaces manual operations and enable pilots to operate planes in "highways in the sky". Image from the Economist.
Unlike an automobile, planes are expensive to own and difficult to operate (although this could change in the future) — not to mention the training needed to safely operate an aircraft. Given all of this, it is unlikely that every person will be able to afford and operate their own their own flying vehicle. Even the inventor of the Hoverbike, Chris Malloy was quoted as saying, “Most people can’t parallel park, so I can’t see most people owning one of these without killing themselves.”
Yet, commercial planes have been around for decades and are used by millions of people. Adopt this model to public transit, and you’ve got yourself an aerial mass transit vehicle, yes?
Understandably this would require certain conditions — extreme traffic congestion, large upper-middle income class, continued rapid pace of technological innovation and etc. — but maybe a fleet of flying buses will be plying our skies sometime in the not too distant future. Micro-airports could be built in designated spots around a city’s periphery and downtown which offer passengers quick and convenient access to a variety of activity centres.
In some ways this is already happening. Members of the elite class in Sao Paulo, Brazil often fly around in one of the over 400 helicopters that jump from building to building, high above the chaotic traffic jams below.
As technologies continue to incorporate new modes of travel, the standards will also shift. Maybe someday our Aerial Rapid Transit nomenclature schema will include flying transit vehicles.