With a throughput of 4.8 million passengers, the vertiport modeled by Darrell Swanson, a consultant for Swanson Aviation, Ltd., would serve as many people on only a three-acre footprint as a traditional airport covering hundreds of acres. Of course, this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison as, although both serve as an interface between terrestrial and sky-based transportation, the serving area of the vertiport is envisioned as regional with more of a point-to-point configuration than a traditional airport.
With such large passenger volume in such a small space, it is critical to take a holistic view of mobility beyond just the logistics of aircraft operations. Working with Pascal and Watson and AIQ Consulting, Swanson used his urban and airport planning background to design a hypothetical vertiport that melded with existing public transportation systems to create a catchment area that could serve an urban vertiport in London’s Waterloo area. The vertiport of the future will have to reduce or remove barriers, such as long security lines, so to minimize dwell time and increase throughput. The vertiport offers the opportunity for multiple income streams with the potential for mixed-use below the aircraft operations deck.
Echoing the mission of CAMI (see this interview for more info on CAMI), which Swanson serves on as an advisor, he stresses the importance of being able to demonstrate to local authorities how vertiports can be implemented with minimal impact on the ground transportation network and have a positive impact by increasing the number of affordable connections not served by public transportation. Swanson envisions the aerial portion of the trip being part of a larger Mobility as a Service offering, whereby one uses an app to set the destination and the trip could be filled through multiple transport modes (e.g. scooter, subway, vehicle rideshare and/or, e-VTOL rideshare).
To this last point, Swanson sees a distributed aviation future where there is a mix of fixed-wing and e-VTOL aircraft that complement each other. This could mean a renaissance of sorts for existing airfields, as the infrastructure changes are minimal to accept e-VTOL traffic. Over time, as costs of pure electric aircraft drop and autonomous flying become the norm, he envisions the rise of electric Low-Cost Carrier (eLCC), which are able to provide mobility at a cost that is competitive with ground transportation alternatives. These eLCCs will rely on shared, autonomous, flying taxis, really flying shuttle buses, to bring connectivity to areas that otherwise be underserved.¹
Some 200 companies are working on the future that will make relatively low-cost aircraft possible. But the volume of aircraft needed to drive down costs will be limited by their ability to serve passengers and is why Swanson states, “We need the vertiport infrastructure to develop a healthy e-VTOL commercial aviation system.”
Interview Highlights #
00:57 – An airport planning and operating background
02:20 – A different type of infrastructure will be needed
03:28 – Vertiport concept in the real-world
04:35 -An app-based end-to-end Mobility as a Service
05:36 – Distributed aviation could be game-changing for rural areas
06:40 – Economics will drive re-emergence of regional airports
07:39 – Planning communities around this new form of transportation
08:20 – CAMI and how it supports local authorities and the communities they represent for things like noise, social utility, etc.
¹ MVRDV just released an Airbus funded report showing how e-VTOL with associated vertiports offer the potential to improve transportation to areas with poor connections.
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