Community Air Mobility Initiative invites decision makers to join further conversations about eVTOL aircraft and Urban Air Mobility

State and local trans­porta­tion deci­sion mak­ers and plan­ners are being invit­ed to join the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAMI) in the sec­ond cohort of the Urban Air Pol­i­cy Col­lab­o­ra­tive (UAPC).

The four-month pro­gramme from Jan­u­ary to April 2021 is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with indus­try experts in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and eVTOL air­craft mar­kets, and fol­lows on from the first cohort which start­ed in July and will run until the end of this year.

It will con­sist of a series of vir­tu­al work­shops and events and upon com­ple­tion, grad­u­ates will join an ongo­ing struc­tured net­work­ing forum, which will con­tin­ue to explore the inte­gra­tion of the third dimen­sion of avi­a­tion in com­mu­ni­ties.

The pro­gramme has also been designed specif­i­cal­ly for author­i­ties are inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing UAM and its poten­tial impacts on their areas.

Speak­ing to eVTOLInsights.com, Yolan­ka Wulff, Co-Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CAMI, said: “The UAPC cohorts pro­vide juris­dic­tions with a base­line under­stand­ing of urban air mobil­i­ty, from the per­spec­tive of indus­try but also from the per­spec­tive of met­ro­pol­i­tan trans­porta­tion sys­tems. The cohort is organ­ised as a con­ver­sa­tion with those lead­ers about their pri­or­i­ties, con­cerns, and inter­est in adding a third dimen­sion to their local trans­porta­tion sys­tem.

“The cur­rent cohort began in July, and will end at the end of 2020. Dur­ing these six months, the pro­gram has includ­ed a pri­ori­ti­sa­tion sur­vey, one-on-one inter­views with indi­vid­ual juris­dic­tions, deep dive webi­nar, guest speak­er, and col­lec­tive con­ver­sa­tion, and will wrap up with a syn­the­sis and find­ings.”

The UAPC pro­gram was joint­ly devel­oped by CAMI and Ellis & Asso­ciates and refined thanks to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of thir­teen organ­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent­ing nine loca­tions who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the first cohort.

Most of these organ­i­sa­tions are gov­ern­men­tal, such state, city and trib­al avi­a­tion and trans­porta­tion depart­ments, from loca­tions in North Amer­i­ca that are already lean­ing into advanced air mobil­i­ty.

Wulff said that CAMI’s goals in cre­at­ing the Urban Air Pol­i­cy Col­lab­o­ra­tive, is to work with local juris­dic­tions inter­est­ed in advanced air mobil­i­ty to:

• build a col­lab­o­ra­tive under­stand­ing of risks and road­blocks
• share indi­vid­ual use cas­es to kin­dle pow­er­ful nation­al pol­i­cy con­ver­sa­tion
• know when to lever­age polit­i­cal will and when to com­mu­ni­cate pub­licly
• define suc­cess by pro­vid­ing finan­cial and per­son­nel resources for edu­ca­tion

Togeth­er, this col­lec­tive voice will cre­ate a stronger bridge between: 

• local and state juris­dic­tions where advanced air mobil­i­ty will roll out
• the indus­tries devel­op­ing the tech­nol­o­gy for this new mode of trans­porta­tion, and 
• the reg­u­la­tors that will over­see much of the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty

In addi­tion to edu­ca­tion and net­work­ing, the UAPC aims to uni­fy local gov­ern­ments on pol­i­cy issues per­tain­ing to the inte­gra­tion and oper­a­tion of UAM tech­nolo­gies into exist­ing trans­porta­tion net­works.

And as well as fos­ter­ing con­nec­tions between for­ward-think­ing com­mu­ni­ties, the UAPC will also pro­vide a com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel for local gov­ern­ments to con­nect to adja­cent efforts such as the NASA AAM Nation­al Cam­paign, the FAA’s UAM efforts, and CAMI’s mem­ber organ­i­sa­tions.

Wulff added: “Our indi­vid­ual ses­sions are struc­tured as con­ver­sa­tion­al inter­views. We spend some time with each juris­dic­tion to under­stand their spe­cif­ic con­cerns, ques­tions, and expe­ri­ences. In these con­ver­sa­tions we cov­er top­ics such as pol­i­cy, land use, urban trans­porta­tion sys­tem inte­gra­tion, com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance, envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, eco­nom­ic con­cerns, and safe­ty.

“Because advanced air mobil­i­ty is a local­ly imple­ment­ed aer­i­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem that needs to accom­mo­date the poli­cies, demo­graph­ics, geo­gra­phies, and infra­struc­ture needs of that loca­tion, CAMI recog­nis­es the impor­tance of work­ing with juris­dic­tions to tai­lor their plans.

“That said, there is much to be learned from and between dif­fer­ent cities and regions that can help oth­er loca­tions, as well as indus­try and reg­u­la­tors, devel­op pro­grammes, tech­nolo­gies, and strate­gies that are replic­a­ble. In this way, CAMI is work­ing towards the devel­op­ment of mod­el poli­cies and best prac­tices that can be tai­lored as need­ed.”

The dead­line to reg­is­ter to be part of the next UAPC cohort is Tues­day, Decem­ber 15th. For more infor­ma­tion, and to reg­is­ter, email contact@communityairmobility.org.

Addi­tion­al­ly, for more infor­ma­tion about CAMI, vis­it www.communityairmobility.org