TEXAS \u2014 There\u2019s Uber and Lyft, but many Texans will soon be able to add air taxis to their rideshare options, according to information released by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Both agencies announced the FAA\u2019s plans to launch a pilot program conducting test flights between Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston.<\/p>\n
North Texans like Matt McKay say they have realized that past visions of future air travel weren\u2019t so far-fetched.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in the era of \u2018The Jetsons\u2019 show, and it\u2019s kind of hard to believe that we\u2019re there now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For Noah Wells, another North Texas driver, the air taxis will be a good way to skip the traffic and scale back on commute time.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs somebody that\u2019s traveled between Dallas and Houston a lot, thinking of ways to be able to get from one place to the other is pretty cool,\u201d said Wells.<\/p>\n
Texas, through TxDOT, represents one of eight states selected by the FAA to be part of the program, participating in the federal agency\u2019s Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) Integration Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the end states of this pilot program that we\u2019re doing with Project Nexus is to enable air taxis for passenger movements as well as, you know, cargo, logistics, freight, medical, all those types of operations in the Lone Star State,\u201d said Sergio Roman, TXDOT\u2019s emerging aviation technical director.<\/p>\n
TxDOT said some flights \u2014 which will operate between Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Houston \u2014 will be manned, and others will fly autonomously. The seating capacities will vary from four to 12 passengers, depending on the eVTOL\u2019s function.<\/p>\n
\u201cTxDOT maintains a very robust multidomain transportation system. When you think about roads and airports and rail and this is just going to unlock that third dimension for Texans and once it happens here, that\u2019ll be able to expand nationally. So consider the idea that a drive that could take 40 minutes in pretty busy traffic now could one day take six, 10, maybe 15 minutes when you can just hop into one of these new technology power lift aircrafts,\u201d Roman said.<\/p>\n
The agencies are working with four different partners, including Joby Aviation, whose founder and CEO Joeben Bevirt called the program \u201ca defining moment for American innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are rolling this out in three phases over three years. Our first phase is going to do a lot with validating the routes and the infrastructure that\u2019s going to be required to make sure that this can be implemented safely and efficiently,\u201d Roman said, indicating that the aircraft will start carrying passengers by the third phase. The first phase is expected to start in the summer of 2026.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump outlined the program in his \u201cUnleashing Drone Dominance Executive Order.\u201d TxDOT says the program is expected to create 2,130 jobs related to vertiport infrastructure and help connect the Texas triangle\u00a0of Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, an economic super-region it said generates $2.1 trillion in gross domestic product.<\/p>\n
However, it\u2019s all happening\u00a0during a shortage of air traffic controllers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe partners that we are working with have a plan for that, and that\u2019s building that ground infrastructure, a digital infrastructure to make sure the traffic management like this is controlled,\u201d said Roman.<\/p>\n
He said, at this time, there is no word on how much this travel option will cost passengers just yet, but he said they hope to make the costs similar to what passengers pay for rideshares or trains.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d probably wait and see how it develops over time from a safety standpoint,\u201d McKay said, showing a little cautious optimism, yet looking forward to an overall safe landing.<\/p>\n
Spectrum News asked people attending the South by Southwest Conference and Festival in Austin about their thoughts on the news. One attendee said it\u2019s about time we have \u201cflying cars,\u201d but they won\u2019t be the first in line to test them out.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlying cars? About time! We were supposed to have flying cars in the early 2000s. I\u2019m not going to be one of the first people to try it but after a couple of them crash and they figure it out, then I\u2019ll be into flying cars,\u201d the attendee said.<\/p>\n
Another festival-goer echoed similar nerves about the new technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would try it, I would try it at least once or twice, but I would have concerns. I\u2019m the type of person, even with the whole electric car all that stuff, people have concerns, but I also think that sometimes, maybe it\u2019s for the best,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 There\u2019s Uber and Lyft, but many Texans will soon be able to add air taxis to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2160,132,134,133,1570,102,138,223,82,3621,1569,2053,15717,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-203056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-austin","10":"tag-austin-headlines","11":"tag-austin-news","12":"tag-ctv","13":"tag-dallas","14":"tag-el-paso","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-san-antonio","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-valencia-jones","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}