Canadian Report: “Public Feel Both Optimism and Concern Towards Flying Taxis and Drones”

Trans­port Cana­da recent­ly com­mis­sioned one of North America’s “fastest grow­ing research com­pa­nies”, Léger, to car­ry out a poll ask­ing Cana­di­ans their view on fly­ing taxis and drones trav­el­ling between remote com­mu­ni­ties and over city and sub­ur­ban areas. 

The response was reas­sur­ing. The study found res­i­dents hold a broad­ly pos­i­tive atti­tude towards Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM). 

Respon­dents par­tic­u­lar­ly favoured AAMs poten­tial for good, includ­ing search and res­cue, fire­fight­ing, med­ical use, and assist­ing with the after­math of envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters. Com­fort with these uses were around 80 per­cent. 

Sur­vey­ing and inspec­tions of pow­er lines, for exam­ple, as well as car­go ship­ment also had over­whelm­ing sup­port. It was only the Fly­ing Taxi aspect, the trans­port­ing of peo­ple, rather than things, notched below 50 per­cent in favour.

One par­tic­i­pant told the poll­sters, “If we are talk­ing about emer­gen­cies, then it’s a no-brain­er. We are going to save lives and put out fires. But when it comes to trans­porta­tion, it’s a NO!”

Fur­ther con­cerns over safe­ty, afford­abil­i­ty, envi­ron­men­tal impact and pri­va­cy tem­pered enthu­si­asm for the air taxis.

The report stat­ed, “The out­look on AAM in Cana­da is a com­plex blend of opti­mism and con­cern. Issues such as the safe­ty and pri­va­cy risks asso­ci­at­ed with drone use, the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of AAM oper­a­tions and the readi­ness for autonomous func­tions are sig­nif­i­cant wor­ries.”

Over half of respon­dents had reser­va­tions around safe­ty and poten­tial crash­es. More than one-third point­ed to secu­ri­ty threats and pri­va­cy fears. And between a quar­ter and a third high­light­ed prices, noise pol­lu­tion and the impact on the envi­ron­ment.

The “cau­tious opti­mism” of respon­dents toward drones and eVTOLs under­scores their per­ceived ben­e­fits, the authors con­clud­ed. “Yet it also sends a clear mes­sage about the neces­si­ty to tack­le safe­ty, envi­ron­men­tal and social issues.”

At present, drones are deployed for tasks rang­ing from aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy to search-and-res­cue mis­sions and wild­fire detec­tion in Cana­da.

Mean­while, air taxis gained a cold­er per­cep­tion from those polled. While eVTOLs hold the promise of trans­port­ing peo­ple and goods across con­gest­ed cities and urban areas, Cana­da is lag­ging behind some of its peers on reg­u­la­tion and gen­er­al pol­i­cy. 

Although last month, Boe­ing pledged USD240 mil­lion toward a Mon­tre­al-area aero­space clus­ter that will include Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty research per­ti­nent to its fly­ing taxi sub­sidiary, the autonomous Wisk Aero.

Bren­dan Nel­son

Bren­dan Nel­son, Boeing’s Glob­al Pres­i­dent, explained in a recent inter­view, “The exper­tise here in auton­o­my is as good as, if not bet­ter than, pret­ty much any­where else in the world.” Adding, “Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is def­i­nite­ly on the hori­zon.”

Even so, what comes over from the Léger report, yet again (!) is the lack of pub­lic edu­ca­tion. If there was a case of the eVTOL com­pa­nies cut­ting off their nose to spite their face, here is a clas­sic exam­ple. 

The poll showed that “more than three-quar­ters of respon­dents to the Léger sur­vey had nev­er heard of advanced air mobil­i­ty, whether fly­ing taxis or drones.”  Yes, over 75 per­cent! Put that on a rotor blade and chew it. How many times does one have to bang the drum to get this crit­i­cal point over to the lead­ing fly­ing taxi estab­lish­ments.

Edu­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion.

Aware­ness was high­er among Cana­di­ans aged 18–34; those with a uni­ver­si­ty diplo­ma; men and Indige­nous peo­ple and peo­ple of colour. The 99-page paper was based on two stud­ies car­ried out between Novem­ber and Jan­u­ary, with a sur­vey sam­ple size of 2,717 par­tic­i­pants along­side four focus groups.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://leger360.com/en

https://tc.canada.ca/en

(News Source: montreal.citynews.ca)

(Top image: SMG Con­sult­ing)

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