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Community Air Mobility Initiative adds seven new members and launches next cohort of its Urban Air Policy Collaborative

The Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAMI) has wel­comed sev­en new mem­bers and expand­ed the sup­port for its mis­sion to respon­si­bly inte­grate air mobil­i­ty at state and local lev­els.

They include Arup, an inde­pen­dent firm of design­ers, plan­ners, engi­neers, archi­tects, con­sul­tants and tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ists, the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium (CAAM), envi­ron­men­tal and trans­porta­tion plan­ning con­sul­tants HMMH and eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Wisk.

As well as com­pa­nies involved in the emerg­ing eVTOL space, new mem­bers also include the City of San Jose, Los Ange­les Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and Heli­copter Asso­ci­a­tion Inter­na­tion­al.

CAMI believes its mis­sion is best served with sup­port from a broad spec­trum of stake­hold­ers, which enables the devel­op­ment of pub­licly avail­able resources and ongo­ing pro­grammes in col­lab­o­ra­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and edu­ca­tion.

Anna Mracek Diet­rich, CAMI’s Direc­tor of Indus­try & Strat­e­gy, said: “By com­bin­ing per­spec­tives and shar­ing resources we can co-cre­ate a vision of the future of trans­porta­tion that is sus­tain­able, equi­table, and suc­cess­ful. Our mem­bers make this pos­si­ble.”

Com­ment­ing on join­ing CAMI, Wisk’s VP of Glob­al Part­ner­ships, Dan Dal­ton added: “We are excit­ed to join CAMI and help fur­ther build out the AAM/UAM ecosys­tem, not only on the ground, but in the air.

“Wisk’s tech­ni­cal under­stand­ing of autonomous eVTOL air­craft, cou­pled with our demon­strat­ed abil­i­ty to lis­ten to com­mu­ni­ties, makes our part­ner­ship with CAMI a crit­i­cal step in advanc­ing the con­ver­sa­tion between eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers and ground com­mu­ni­ties. We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with CAMI and its oth­er mem­bers to edu­cate and com­mu­ni­cate the val­ue and impor­tance of sus­tain­able and equi­table urban air mobil­i­ty inte­gra­tion.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, CAMI’s Urban Air Pol­i­cy Col­lab­o­ra­tive (UAPC) has launched its sec­ond cohort of pub­lic agen­cies, which will work togeth­er to devel­op a frame­work of poli­cies and best prac­tices for the local imple­men­ta­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty.

This will be done through the shar­ing of knowl­edge, dis­cus­sion of issues, devel­op­ment of rec­om­men­da­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with peers through an ongo­ing pro­gramme of con­ver­sa­tions, pre­sen­ta­tions and work­shops.

This sec­ond cohort con­sists of plan­ners and deci­sion mak­ers from across Cana­da and the USA, which includes the cities of Orlan­do and San Jose, the Choctaw Nation of Okla­homa, Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and Mari­na Munic­i­pal Air­port in Cal­i­for­nia. This fol­lows the first cohort, which start­ed in July 2020, includes depart­ments of trans­porta­tions in the US states of Geor­gia, Mass­a­chu­setts and North Car­oli­na.

Yolan­ka Wulff, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CAMI, added: “As the indus­try matures the tech­nolo­gies need­ed to bring elec­tric air­craft into com­mu­ni­ties, the need to bridge the work of the indus­try with the local com­mu­ni­ties where this tech­nol­o­gy will be imple­ment­ed is becom­ing ever more acute.

“CAMI under­stands the impor­tance of work­ing with all of the stake­hold­ers to devel­op a vision for advanced air mobil­i­ty that ben­e­fits as many com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as pos­si­ble and is an inte­gral part of our trans­porta­tion sys­tems and dai­ly lives.”

Wulff talked to eVTOL Insights about the UAPC cohorts in more detail at the end of last year, and was also a guest in our pop­u­lar series of pod­casts.

For more infor­ma­tion on par­tic­i­pat­ing in a future cohort, vis­it www.communityairmobility.org or email contact@communityairmobility.org.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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