Drones floated as possible solution to worsening metropolitan gridlock

Could passenger-carrying drones someday be the answer to traffic delays?

It seems like an outlandish, space-age fantasy — but some in the burgeoning urban air mobility industry believe short-haul flights in unpiloted electric flying vehicles will be a key answer to gridlock in major metropolitan areas.

A number of startups, including Uber Elevate, are working on developing such a system that could transport people and goods. Some have attracted millions of dollars in venture capital funding.

Yet there are staggering hurdles, ranging from cost to safety, noise, public acceptance, regulations, space for vertiports, and questions about who would pay for and who would control the infrastructure for such transportation.

In metro Atlanta, discussion about the technology’s future has already begun.

Georgia Tech this year created a Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility to explore the development of aircraft for transportation in densely populated urban areas. Professors leading the effort held an urban air mobility workshop in Atlanta in January. Three months later, national industry publication Aviation Week held an urban air mobility conference at the Georgia World Congress Center.

“We’re entering this era in large cities where we’re facing intense gridlock and it’s just getting worse,” said Mark Moore, engineering director of Uber’s urban air mobility unit Uber Elevate, at the Georgia Tech conference.

The Uber air service his company envisions could potentially cut peak commute times by more than 50 percent, according to Moore. Uber Elevate plans to eventually start demonstration flights of small electric aircraft in Dallas and Los Angeles and launch commercial service in 2023.

Georgia Tech professor Brian German, director of the new Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility, said there are more than 100 electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft under development by different companies. These aircraft would not be as powerful as helicopters, but would cost much less to operate and maintain, and would be designed for short hops.

A survey of 2,500 commuters in Atlanta and other cities is underway to determine the potential demand for an air taxi service for what is now a 30-minute commute, according to Georgia Tech civil engineering professor Laurie Garrow, associate director of the new air mobility center.

“We are trying to understand different factors that will help adoption, or the barriers for urban air mobility taxi service in Atlanta,” Garrow said.

Among the biggest challenges would be getting regulatory approval and developing vertiports.

Aside from the safety of the aircraft themselves, flying passenger drones would add even more complexity to air traffic control. “If this increases the number of flight operations in a city by a large amount, then the old mechanisms we have won’t be adequate anymore,” German said.