AMRG Presents: Planning for Advanced Air Mobility - PAS Report 606

The highly anticipated report on Planning for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) has just been released by the American Planning Association in conjunction with the Mineta Transportation Institute.

Who: Written by Adam Cohen, Susan Shaheen, PhD, and Yolanka Wulff, JD

What: Planning for Advanced Air Mobility provides planners and other stakeholders with a general guide to the processes to establish AAM in their community as well as ways to address and ameliorate concerns about the new transit mode. Link to Report HERE.

Summary:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Advanced air mobility (AAM) refers to the development of on-demand aviation services in urban, suburban, and rural areas. AAM encompasses services that are customized to suit particular types of built environments, including urban, rural, and regional air transportation. Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) encompasses a range of aircraft uses and commercial strategies aimed at satisfying the varied requirements of travelers, customers, airlines, aircraft owners, and other interested parties.

Effective preparation for AAM necessitates a comprehensive comprehension of these principles and the reciprocal relationship among airspace, land use, and built environments. AAM applications encompass several sectors, such as passenger transportation, logistics, product delivery, emergency response, and other professional and industrial purposes. AAM activities are anticipated to occur at low altitude and inside metropolitan settings.

The paper highlights the significance of the active participation of planners and policymakers in AAM planning and execution to assess the fairness, social, environmental, economic development, and workforce effects of AAM on communities. Furthermore, it emphasizes the necessity of sharing government data, modernizing tall structures, creating modeling tools, adopting best practices for integrating many modes of transportation and collaborating with stakeholders to provide sustainable and fair results. The study is structured into seven chapters, encompassing an introduction to AAM, possible obstacles, social fairness, vertiport infrastructure, and the incorporation of AAM into planning practice. The text finishes by examining the future prospects of AAM and outlining the role of planners in assisting communities in their preparedness for the new transportation type.

Chapter 2: Urban Aviation Concepts and Air Taxi Services - Historical Overview of Urban Flight

The idea of utilizing aircraft for short-distance applications in urban areas has existed for many years. Urban flight includes the development of flying automobile prototypes, the establishment of air taxi services using helicopters, and the advancement of advanced air mobility (AAM) technologies.

In the early 2010s, third-party operators were employed by on-demand flying businesses such as BLADE in New York City. Drones are progressively employed for the purpose of delivering commodities, transporting medical supplies, creating maps, conducting surveillance, and fulfilling other professional applications.

The field of Urban Air Mobility (AAM) has had notable advancements in recent years, characterized by the development of cutting-edge aircraft and services. In 2021, a number of Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) manufacturers and service providers were listed on international stock markets.

Automakers and passenger airlines have made commitments to invest in AAM. It is anticipated that AAM services will be introduced in the mid-to-late 2020s using aircraft that have been approved by the FAA. By 2035, the estimated worldwide market potential for AAM is projected to range from $74 billion to $641 billion. Specifically, the passenger service market sector has a potential value of $2.8 billion to $4 billion in 2030, while the products delivery market segment has a potential value of $3.1 billion to $8 billion in the same year.

Chapter 2: Potential Challenges of AAM

Advanced air mobility (AAM) faces numerous challenges, including safety, security, air traffic management, weather, noise, privacy, visual pollution, energy and environmental impacts, and land use compatibility. These issues could affect public perceptions and impact communities and planning practice. Planners should be aware of these operational challenges and understand the role of state and federal agencies in addressing them.

Integrating AAM into existing transportation networks, societal systems, and the built environment will also present challenges. Safety concerns include ground safety, flight outside approved airspace, unsafe proximity to people or property, critical system failure, fires, cybersecurity risks, and other potential hazards. Current regulatory frameworks and standards only address on-board piloted operations, not remotely piloted or autonomous flight.The security of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is crucial for maintaining safety and public confidence.

Air carriers, vertiport operators, and law enforcement play key roles in ensuring AAM security. Key security concerns include hijacking, terrorism, aircraft sabotage, and unruly passengers. Strategies to enhance personal safety include passenger background checks, no-fly lists, rating systems, emergency dispatch buttons, and individual passenger compartments. The public sector must also implement policies to mitigate insiders' access to AAM infrastructure and services. Close coordination among local and regional governments, law enforcement, state departments of transportation, national security agencies, and private-sector stakeholders is necessary to establish security standards and emergency plans.

Weather conditions can pose safety and operational challenges for autonomous aerial vehicles (AAM), including low visibility, snow accumulation, wind shear, and lightning. These risks can affect low-altitude and high-density built environments, ice, low temperatures, precipitation, turbulence, visibility, and wind shear.

AAM's value proposition relies on convenience and time savings, and strategies like delaying or rerouting flights to alternate airports may not be viable due to low visibility conditions. As AAM scales and employs greater levels of autonomy, more granular weather data will be needed for AAM and other transportation modes. Local and regional governments, state DOTs, the private sector, and other stakeholders may play a crucial role in collecting, analyzing, and sharing this information.

The potential impacts of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) on community members include noise, privacy, visual pollution, energy use, emissions, and infrastructure compatibility. Planners should understand these impacts and use land use, zoning, and other planning and policy levers as mitigation strategies. AAM can also impact social equity and multimodal integration, and planners can guide sustainable and equitable outcomes. Research on AAM noise and planning is limited, but emerging studies provide insights on public perception.

The use of advanced air mobility (AAM) poses significant challenges to privacy, including physical and data privacy. Concerns include stalking, photo/video recording, sharing of recorded information, and the use of small drones near residential land uses. Regulation has not kept pace with these concerns, but some states have passed legislation to protect privacy rights. Overcrowding of low-altitude aircraft in urbanized areas can create visual pollution, which is difficult to quantify due to its diverse and diverse impacts.

Research on the aesthetic impacts of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and small drones suggests that visual pollution from AAM could be perceived as an environmental concern. Energy consumption, emissions, and energy infrastructure could also pose challenges.

The deployment of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) will require extensive infrastructure, including takeoff and landing, energy, and digital infrastructure. This growth will require repurposing, renovating, adapting, replacing, redeveloping, or constructing infrastructure. New infrastructure close to the origin and destination pairs will be needed to reduce modal connections and travel times. In urban areas, limited land for new infrastructure, heights of existing buildings, availability of enabling infrastructure, and impacts of AAM operations on surrounding communities can present challenges. Understanding the relationship between the built environment and infrastructure siting is important for integrating AAM with adjacent land uses and prioritizing sustainable ground connections.

Public perception and community acceptance of AAM may vary by socio-demographics, with adoption higher among younger individuals, males, those with high household incomes, and those with higher educational attainment.

Chapter 4: Social Equity and AAM

Social equity is crucial for ensuring access to AAM, which includes aeromedical services, jobs, and economic development. AAM impacts can be organized into three categories:

• Impacts of vertiport development and AAM operations on local area
• Affordability and accessibility of AAM flights
• Environmental justice and the allocation of public resources.

Vertiport placement and operations can have impacts on surrounding neighborhoods, such as transit-oriented development (TOD) and vertiport-oriented development (VOD). To minimize gentrification and displacement, planners should consider affordable housing trust funds, neighborhood trust, land banks, inclusionary zoning, property tax reductions, home ownership assistance programs, renter assistance programs, and commercial ownership assistance programs.

Stakeholder and community engagement are essential for supporting equitable AAM planning and implementation. The impact of vertiport siting on surrounding communities, including low-income and minority communities, is a significant social equity concern.

Vertiports can also provide opportunities for economic development and neighborhood revitalization, creating new jobs and enabling the AAM industry.

Affordability and access for people with disabilities are primary social equity concerns. Accessibility for people with disabilities is crucial, and all AAM facilities must be fully accessible.

Environmental justice and the allocation of limited public resources for AAM raise additional social equity concerns. Fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people are essential for ensuring fair treatment and participation in decision-making processes.

The emergence of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) as an urban transportation sector has the potential to impact protected classes under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Disparate treatment and disparate impact discrimination are two types of inequities that can occur when a recipient of federal funding adopts a procedure or practice that has a disproportionate, adverse impact on individuals. To prevent disparate treatment and disparate impact discrimination, public agencies and recipients of federal funding must consider whether there is a substantial, legitimate justification for the policy or practice and an alternative policy or practice with a lesser adverse impact.

The federal government has taken several actions to focus federal attention on human health and environmental conditions in minority and low-income communities. The STEPS equity framework identifies five barriers to transportation equity: spatial, temporal, economic, physiological, and social. Spatial barriers create physical gaps in the transportation network, while temporal barriers create gaps during travel times. Economic barriers include financial and structural costs of travel, while physiological barriers include physical and cognitive limitations. Social barriers include social, cultural, safety, and language challenges.

Chapter 5: Vertiport Infrastructure and Multimodal Integration

AAM requires extensive infrastructure, including takeoff and landing facilities and enabling energy infrastructure. Most off-airport AAM use cases will use vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Both public and private sectors may need to identify ways to repurpose existing infrastructure for AAM, but constructing new and adapting existing infrastructure for AAM could present planning challenges such as local concerns, cost, and multimodal integration.

Vertical takeoff and landing infrastructure can be categorized into three types: vertipads/vertistations, vertiports/vertibases, and vertihubs. AAM may also use existing infrastructure such as heliports and airports for amphibious operations. New vertiports close to the origins and destinations of AAM activity will likely be needed to reduce the number of modal connections and travel times associated with first and last-mile connections.

Potential business and operational models for vertiports include publicly owned and operated, publicly owned, contract/third-party operated, public-private partnership, and privately owned and operated. As AAM grows, planners and policymakers must decide whether AAM infrastructure should be exclusive to a single service provider, offer preferential use for some service providers with partial access to other users, provide prioritized use for specific use cases, or be open to multiple air carriers. Managing competition among service providers is crucial in ensuring the efficient use of public resources in AAM.

The FAA has released a Vertiport Design Engineering Brief for airport owner-operators and their support staff, providing emerging practice for the design of vertiports for VTOL aircraft. The brief covers service characteristics and use cases, procedures for allocating and valuing public resources, cost recovery, and value capture. The brief also discusses methods used to address competition among AAM service providers, such as first-come, first-served, lottery, auctions, preferential treatment, collaborative approaches, and requests for proposals. Understanding these concepts can help planners integrate AAM into policy and planning documents. The brief also discusses land use compatibility and siting considerations.

Vertiport facilities, like airports, involve landside and airside activities. Landside areas include passenger and cargo terminals, ground access, and public transit. Airside areas include areas for aircraft parking, taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Safety-critical airside design elements include touchdown and liftoff (TLOF), final approach and takeoff (FATO), and safety area. Controlling dimensions (CD) determine aircraft size and approach/departure path. Additional design considerations include regulatory considerations, airspace access, aircraft parking, charging, facility security, and energy infrastructure.

Developing infrastructure requires assessing site conditions, developing plans, engaging stakeholders, designing systems, and obtaining approvals. Investing in smart charging, onsite energy generation, and microgrids can help reduce delays, provide cost savings, and enhance resilience. Over 3,000 US utilities offer transportation electrification programs to support infrastructure development, including electric vehicle rates and charging facilities. Over 100 airports are in various stages of planning and deploying aircraft chargers.

Planning for scaling infrastructure from the outset is crucial for the success of this sector. California's Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) has developed a station access typology and station access hierarchy to guide multimodal integration of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) into existing transportation systems. VOD, a concept that maximizes residential, office, retail, and other synergistic land uses within walking distance of a vertiport, can be applied to vertiport design and access. Joint development, where the public sector contributes funding or real property, can also be used to integrate AAM.

Chapter 6: Integrating AAM into Planning Practice

Local policies, such as zoning and regulatory codes, play a crucial role in the integration of AAM into communities. These policies can guide planning outcomes by addressing key issues affecting AAM, such as assessing port facilities, predicting future demand, assessing safety hazards, and minimizing noise and safety hazards.

Cities like Orlando have proactively identified and planned for disruptive innovations to ensure a diverse and inclusive community. Orlando's Growth Management Plan (GMP) outlines the city's vision, policy, and direction for growth, including Objective 1.22, which states that the city will continue to review individual requests for vertiport construction as a conditional use. However, the city faces tension between transportation systems and land use, as seen with the expansion of expressways and the introduction of Sunrail. In 2021, Orlando held meetings and workshops with aviation stakeholders to educate them about AAM and collaborate with local land use and transportation planners.

To address AAM, planners must understand aviation rules and policies, work with state DOT aviation divisions and local FAA regulators, and integrate AAM considerations into planning documents and code updates.

Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) can use existing planning processes to integrate AAM, ensuring regional cooperation and coordination among local governments and governmental transportation authorities. Incorporating AAM into transportation planning within the largest Metropolitan Transportation Areas (MSAs) is a complex task due to their intricate transportation networks. Local policy and regulatory considerations for AAM primarily relate to vertiport land use compatibility issues, which can be addressed through zoning, local vertiport approvals, funding for AAM infrastructure, and local public-private partnerships.

Zoning ordinances are crucial tools for guiding the location of proposed vertiports and controlling development around them. Form-based codes support predictable building outcomes by using physical form as the organizing principle. Public investments in AAM can influence the location, type, and scale of development in cities and regions. Public-private partnerships (P3s) can help address planning and policy challenges and guide AAM outcomes.

Chapter 7: Looking Ahead

Advanced air mobility (AAM) is a growing concept focusing on emerging aviation markets and use cases for urban, suburban, and rural operations. It is driven by advancements in aircraft technologies, such as vertical lift, electrification, and automation, and the growth of app-based on-demand mobility. However, concerns about safety, regulatory environment, air traffic management, security, infrastructure, multimodal integration, land use compatibility, emission impacts, noise, and community acceptance pose challenges.

The PAS Report emphasizes the need for greater awareness and understanding of AAM's potential impacts on local and regional governments. The AAM sector faces several uncertainties, including use case mainstreaming, market affordability, the role of local and regional governments, public investment, social and environmental impacts of AAM deployments, and public acceptance. These uncertainties present ongoing challenges for planners and policymakers trying to understand and prepare for the potential impacts of AAM.

Priority areas for research, engagement, and policy include:

• building institutional capacity for AAM research,
• researching potential impacts of vertiport locations and AAM routing,
• evaluating demonstrations,
• understanding public perceptions,
• prioritizing stakeholder and community engagement, and
• developing zoning provisions.

As AAM becomes a transportation strategy, planners and policymakers must decide the level of commitment to and influence over AAM-related issues. Balancing public goals for AAM with commercial interests is crucial for communities to harness the potential social and environmental benefits of these transportation innovations.

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