It’s Officially the Future, but Do We Want It?
One of the most common science fiction fantasies, the flying car, became a little more realistic as Uber published a white paper last week discussing the feasibility of and their willingness to collaborate on Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) aircrafts, aka flying cars. Although they are not interested in developing the technology themselves, the white paper signals to technology firms that Uber will help provide a market, dubbed Uber Elevate, for the finished product. A number of companies, including Zee.Aero funded by Google’s Larry Page, are already working on the technology and beginning test flights. As Uber CPO Jeff Holden describes it, flying cars have the potential to reduce commute times from two hours to 15 minutes at a lower cost than a regular Uber while also producing zero emissions and, ideally, providing a better safety record than cars once a number of (enormous) hurdles are cleared in terms of technological development, logistics, pilot training, regulations and approvals, and getting sufficient demand for economies of scale to kick in.
However, the development of any new technology should be accompanied by a discussion of whether it is valuable rather than just embracing technology for technology’s sake. This plan may have value in the suburb-city commute that Uber envisions VTOL technology initially playing a role in as its ultimate speed may save many commute hours. However, this plan is neither workable nor desirable in a complex and crowded city, such as New York, where people are taking short trips that are best satisfied by mass transit.
“Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground.”[1]
It is precisely because we have leveraged three-dimensional space for living that we should not be leveraging three-dimensional space for transit congestion, at least insofar as doing so would put people in large, separate and anti-social pods that can only hold a handful of people at most. It is precisely for this reason that we should be investing more money in mass transit, despite the expense. Imagine a dense city where the light was blocked out by a swarm of flying cars, as it already is in part by buildings. Imagine a dense city where being a pedestrian was that much more dangerous as road space was that much less obvious, even with the promises of autonomous technology doing most of the driving. Imagine a dense city where the 6th or 20th story window that used to provide a modicum of privacy is now fair game. Imagine the fatalities and property damage in the event something went wrong, however unlikely. No thank you.
[1] Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation. Posted by Jeff Holden, Chief Product Officer at Uber. https://medium.com/@UberPubPolicy/fast-forwarding-to-a-future-of-on-demand-urban-air-transportation-f6ad36950ffa#.o4tas5134
