Los Angeles progresses its Urban Air Mobility plans with year-long partnership to engage city residents

Los Ange­les May­or Eric Garcetti has announced a year-long pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship which aims to help edu­cate and engage city res­i­dents about Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and make it a leader in this space.

Work­ing with both Urban Move­ment Labs (UML) and the Los Ange­les Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (LADOT), the ‘Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Part­ner­ship’ will help roll out the chal­lenges iden­ti­fied by local and diverse stake­hold­ers sur­round­ing pub­lic air­space and prop­er­ty rights — and imple­ment solu­tions to these issues.

Los Ange­les is one of Uber Ele­vate’s first launch cities for its aer­i­al ride-shar­ing plat­form, along with Dal­las and Mel­bourne. This lat­est news shows the city still wants to progress with plans to imple­ment Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions before 2023 — with or with­out Uber.

May­or Garcetti said: “Los Ange­les is where we turn today’s ideas into tomorrow’s real­i­ty — a place where a bar­ri­er-break­ing con­cept like urban air mobil­i­ty can tru­ly get off the ground.

“The Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Part­ner­ship will make our city a force for clean­er skies, safer trans­porta­tion, expand­ed pros­per­i­ty, and stun­ning inno­va­tion, and pro­vide a tem­plate for how oth­er local gov­ern­ments can take this new tech­nol­o­gy to even greater heights.” 

UML and the city will lead a mul­ti-stake­hold­er effort which will then cul­mi­nate in a pol­i­cy toolk­it that can be utilised and deployed by cities, coun­ties and trib­al gov­ern­ments across the USA.

Financed by the Hyundai Motor Group’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Divi­sion, the part­ner­ship will also see UML work hand-in-hand with Estolano Advi­sors to hire an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Fel­low, who will be respon­si­ble with advanc­ing a com­pre­hen­sive pub­lic engage­ment strat­e­gy.

Lil­ly Shoup, Inter­im Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Urban Move­ment Labs, said: “Urban Move­ment Labs is delight­ed to part­ner with the Mayor’s Office, LADOT, and all Ange­lenos to make urban air mobil­i­ty work for our city,”

“This mod­el of pub­lic-pri­vate-com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ship is foun­da­tion­al to UML’s mis­sion, and will serve as an exam­ple for cities around the world on how to co-design new parts of cities’ trans­porta­tion net­works.”  

The announce­ment of the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Part­ner­ship comes on the heels of the pub­li­ca­tion of the “Prin­ci­ples of the Urban Sky,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion between May­or Garcetti’s office, the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, and a group of 50 indus­try, not-for-prof­it, aca­d­e­m­ic, and pub­lic sec­tor stake­hold­ers.

The prin­ci­ples estab­lish a joint com­mit­ment to safe, low-noise, and sus­tain­able urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions that pri­ori­tise equi­ty of access, con­nec­tions to tran­sit, pur­pose-dri­ven data shar­ing, and local work­force devel­op­ment. 

This is tied to LADOT’s work to inte­grate aer­i­al trans­porta­tion with L.A.’s ground trans­porta­tion sys­tems.

Sele­ta Reynolds, LADOT Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, said: “Now more than ever, with so many suf­fer­ing the impacts of a dev­as­tat­ing pan­dem­ic, Los Ange­les needs a resilient trans­porta­tion net­work that can adapt to the needs of its com­mu­ni­ties with the flip of a switch.

“As we pre­pare to include Urban Air Mobil­i­ty as a viable option for mov­ing goods and peo­ple across our City, it is crit­i­cal that we hear from stake­hold­ers and design a sys­tem that works for all Ange­lenos.”

Pamela Cohn, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Divi­sion of Hyundai Motor Group, added: “Devel­op­ing a scal­able sys­tem to sup­port urban air mobil­i­ty will ‘take a vil­lage,’ and Hyundai is proud to work along­side the City of L.A. and Urban Move­ment Labs to advance this impor­tant mode of trans­porta­tion

“This part­ner­ship sets a prece­dent for how diverse stake­hold­ers can col­lab­o­rate on a safe, com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tered approach to inte­grat­ing aer­i­al mobil­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy into exist­ing and new mul­ti­modal plat­forms.”

For more infor­ma­tion about the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Part­ner­ship, vis­it https://www.urbanmovementlabs.com/programs-projects/. Addi­tion­al­ly, for details about the Fel­low­ship and how to apply, vis­it urbanmovementlabs.com/careers.