SKYAID
New 
Mission
Overview   
Details    
Medical   
Watch   
Heart attack  
Stroke    
World health  
Emergency
Cost effective
Media 
- Site Map 

SKYCAR   
Details   
Overview  
VTOL   
Airline   
Military   
Transportation
Images 
- Site Map

Search

Translate 
  8 languages
 

Potential Skycar Routes  updated  10/12/02

Many routes have been considered for high speed trains around the world.  
Most proposed or existing high speed train routes are excellent candidates for a Skycar service.

• Sydney - Canberra - Melbourne: 539 miles 12 million passengers anticipated
• Tokyo - Osaka  250 miles, 2.5 hours.  Skycar 1 hour in parallel with existing high speed rail
     note: speeding up the train to 300km/hr would save only a few minutes (lots of stops along the way)
• Paris - Lyons  273 miles now 2 hours  Skycar 1 hour
• Miami - Palm Beach - Orlando - Tampa  314 miles   2 to 6 million riders anticipated
• Dallas - Houston - San Antonio ($7 billion)   6 to 9 million riders anticipated
• Cleveland - Columbus - Cincinnati 257 miles   4 million riders anticipated
• Philadelphia - Pittsburgh 308 miles    7 million riders anticipated
• Sao Paolo - Rio De Janeiro 280 miles
• Taipei - Kaohsiung 210 miles
• Seoul - Pusan 235 miles

Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Reno, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego    updated 12/19/00

    Just the rolling stock of a TGV system (from France) costs $30,000 per passenger seat

US city pairs which are good potential air taxi markets
    - less than 400 miles apart
    - each pair has more than 1 million passengers per year

Los Angeles : San Francisco
Los Angeles : Las Vegas
Los Angeles : Phoenix
Los Angeles : Sacramento

New York : Boston
New York : Washington
New York : Pittsburgh 
New York : Buffalo

Dallas : Houston
Dallas : San Antonio
Dallas : Austin

San Diego : San Francisco
San Diego : Phoenix

Chicago : Minneapolis
Chicago : St Louis

In general, a 200 mile new high speed rail route in the US costs at least $4 billion. 
A complete 200 miles skycar system (with Skycars, air traffic control, and landing sites) 
would cost about $0.5 billion and provide trips in 1 hour instead of 2 hours.  

Also, the Skycar system could be operational much more quickly.

Cost of a mile of US high speed rail route varies from $10 Million to over $70 million.

Many of the costs of a high speed rail corridor do not exist in a Skycar system.

Routes over water, currently served by ferries, are also good candidates.

For example: Seattle-Bremerton: a single ferry costs $80 million, 
but a fleet of 35 Skycars would handle the same amount of people
      for $14 million ($400,000 per Skycar).

Delivery
Ultra-fresh food: I calculated in 1993 that a Skycar service to fly fresh fish from a fishing boat 300 miles out at sea would make a modest profit with cargo of 10 cents per pound.  Such as service would provide much fresher food AND eliminate several days of non-productive travel time for the fishing boat.  Another example of the need for fresher food is the desire by the Japanese to buy only 'same day' milk.