Flying taxis revived: Can Urban air mobility reduce road congestion?

Many metropolitan regions are investigating Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a new transport mode for medium distance intra-regional trips. In this paper, an agent-based travel demand model was developed to simulate UAM demand for the region surrounding Munich, Germany. Special attention was given to mode choice, vertiport access and egress, airport trips, and UAM vehicle capacity constraints. Under base conditions, the model predicts a rather small mode share for UAM of 0.61%. The results show that in a metropolitan area with well-developed road and transit networks, traveling by UAM does not save much time. This is particularly true if access and egress trips to and from vertiports are included, as well as wait times, security checks and boarding times. The model shows that there is no reduction in vehicle kilometers traveled by car due to the modal shift to UAM. In fact, if access and egress trips to the vertiports are included, the total vehicle-kilometers traveled by car increases by 0.3%. Therefore, UAM is not found to alleviate congestion, but at most may serve selected markets, such as emergency vehicles or longer trips between remote areas where other transport networks are not as well developed.