Potential short- to long-term impacts of on-demand urban air mobility on transportation demand in North America

Abstract

This study applies an agent-based approach to investigate the potential individual-level demand for and system-wide impacts of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) in the short- to long-term, in two real U.S. metropolitan areas. The UAM service we envision in this research provides mobility to on-demand requests from one vertiport to another. The investigations consider the existing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft models (assuming they are piloted) and vertiport designs, while accounting for the uncertainties in (i) service attributes (e.g., time saving and service price), and (ii) demand characteristics (e.g., perceived waiting time in various conditions). Towards this goal, the state-of-the-art agent-based simulation platform SimMobility is expanded in this research with new modules required for realistic simulation of the demand, supply, and demand–supply interactions. The expanded platform adopts a high-fidelity model system with: (i) a behaviorally sound demand model to mimic the switching behavior from current non-UAM mode to UAM and to capture the individuals’ willingness to pay and plan-action dynamics in decision-making; (ii) a detailed operation model to account for not only the integration of ground and aerial transportation but also fleet rebalancing and the intra-vertiport state dynamics such as charging, gate availability, taxiing, pre-landing hovering (as a result of capacity limitations), etc.; (iii) a demand-driven vertiport placement and capacity generation module. The results show that the UAM market is expected to start narrow (0.187 % to 0.197 % of all trips) and remain niche in the long term (1.45 % to 1.81 % of all trips) for both cities. In addition, the service is expected to increase mobility inequality, even in the long term. The potential UAM users turned out to be primarily high-income in all scenarios (e.g., 46.9 % to 59.2 % in the long term). Moreover, car-oriented individuals are identified as the main users – not only are most UAM trips expected to emerge from drive-alone trips (84.7 % to 92.8 % at launch), but also drive-alone is expected to be the most preferred access/egress mode (78.4 % to 83.6 % share among all UAM trips at launch). Notably, short-range UAM trips (i.e., flight distance below 40 km) constitute the majority of the UAM potential demand (94.6 % in the long-term scenario).