Los Angeles Urban Air Mobility Program

New forms of metropolitan aviation, especially with self-guided drones capable of transporting people, are already in test or in many places in the process of being introduced. Air taxis can also be new forms of public transport. Los Angeles is also one of these cities.

Los Angeles has announced a one-year program to shape the future of the city’s airspace. The main goal of the program is to involve and educate city dwellers in electric air mobility. The strategy created will help to map public airspace and the wide range of local interests that surround it, as well as to identify challenges and find the most appropriate solutions to these issues. An organization called the Urban Air Mobility Partnership has pledged to educate and involve city residents in low-noise electric aircraft by 2023. The program will involve PPPs, that is, the public and private sectors, between the Mayor’s Office, the Los Angeles Transportation Bureau (LADOT) and Urban Movement Labs (UML). The collaboration will try to outline a “vertiport” that will be a new player in LA’s transport network. In these vertiports, people will be able to use the flying tools of urban air mobility. The experience gained through the one-year partnership will also be used to create a kind of regulatory toolkit that U.S. cities, counties, and tribal governments across the country can adopt and implement.

“In Los Angeles, we are turning today’s ideas into tomorrow’s reality – a place where a revolutionary new concept such as urban air mobility can take wing. it makes it a champion of impressive innovation and sets an example of how other municipalities can take this new technology to even greater heights, Mayor Eric Garcetti said. The announcement of the partnership soon followed Garcetti’s Mayor’s Office’s “Urban Sky Principles,” a collaboration with the World Economic Forum and a 50-member group from industry, the nonprofit, academia, and the public sector. The principles summarize the common commitment to safe, low-noise and sustainable urban air mobility operations, prioritizing equality of access, transit connectivity, targeted data sharing and local workforce development.