Vertiports for Skycar operation

Design consideration for a 20,000 passenger/day Vertiport
{single vertiport for a large city}

Noise
Vertiport (take-off and landing) would be built on top of a multilevel parking garage.
The parking garage should be at least 4 stores tall to reduce bothering the neighbors with the air traffic.
Desirable to locate the vertiport so that the slight noise will not disturb the neighbors.
For example - locate near a freeway.

Locate vertiport near transportation center(s)
Desirable to locate the vertiport near to an already existing transportation center
- such as bus, subway, airport, etc.
We assume that taxi and car rental service will migrate to the vertiport.
It is desirable to provide passengers with ground transportation before arrival- car rental, taxi, etc.
This ground transportation could be arranged before or even during the flight.

Locate on top of parking garage - no runway needed
A 'powered lift' vertiport should not require the 1/2 to 1 mile cleared area required for
helicopter vertiports which are designed for aborted take-offs.
{If a helicopter engine fails during take-off, the helicopter must auto-rotate back to ground}
This requires a long cleared-off region where the helicopter (with very wide blades) can land.
The 'powered lift' Skycar does not require any cleared-off area because:

Tickets
The destination of each of the 40 doors will change frequently, since an air taxi can probably land, unload, and reload in less than 5 minutes.

We may want to have "smart tickets" which display the door number for the holder to go to, and which would provide clues (visual, audio, vibration) indicating that the holder's flight will soon be departing. The clue would be in the language appropriate to each passenger - not just English.

People greeting the arriving passengers might also get something like a "smart ticket' to directed them to the correct door at the correct time.

It will probably not be necessary to have a human "ticket taker" at each door.
The pilot will probably be able to serve that function, similar to the function served by taxi or bus drivers
There would be an electronic sign near each door displaying the current arrival and destination.

The smart tickets would be obtained at the ticket area and be deposited/de-activated at the departure door.
It may be possible that a "smart ticket" could be used for multiple legs of a journey.
Minimally a person should be able to purchase a "thru flight" and pickup the smart tickets at each vertiport.

Ticket price based on maximum departure time and time of day
This will equalize the demand for Skycars during the day.
   < 10 minutes,
   < 20 minutes,
   < 1 hour,
   - standby (immediate to 4 hour – but have 5 minute warning)
   - delayed (anytime in 4 hours but have 1 hour notification to telephone/cell-phone/ pager, etc.)

Should weight influence ticket price?
Can/should the air taxi ticket price be higher for excess weight?
1 = adult, .3 = child, 1.3 = obese adult or lots of luggage
> 300 pounds – would not permit as many passengers on the small air taxi
Southwest airlines is permitted to charge very large passengers for two seats

Payment
By credit card, debit card, smart card, cash,
and perhaps cashiers checks and personal checks – electronic deduct from account.

Cover the load/unload area
It will probably be desirable for the air taxi to move 10-20 feet to be under an overhanging roof
so as to protect the passengers from the elements (rain, snow, wind, etc.).
In some climates (very hot, very cold) the air taxi could land and go thru curtains before disembarking the passengers.
In very snowy climates i

Vertiport daily passenger volume = 20,000
- Arriving passengers: peak = 40 doors x 4 passengers x 12/hour
- Assume 24 hour arrival = 6 hours of peak traffic daily = 11,500
- Assume arriving passenger + departing passenger = 1.8 X arrivals = 20,000 daily

Skycar volume: 1 landing/take-off per pad per minute
12/hour * 40 doors = 480 Skycars/hour.
1 pad will be shared by 4 doors,
     so there will be 480/10 Skycars/pad/hour = approximately 1 Skycar/pad/minute

Auto parking = 2.2 million square feet
Parking is the primary factor setting the vertiport size
Historical airport studies have shown a need to park
    0.45 autos per passenger weekdays and
    0.85 autos per passenger on weekends.
Vertiport parking, with shorter trips, and availability of trains, taxi, busses, etc. will probably have a different requirement
    assume 0.6 parking space per departing passenger
    assume that average parking stay is 1 day (some a few hours, most a single day, some a few days)
          0.6 x 11,500 = 6,900 parking spaces
Each parking space, including ramps, etc. has been found to require 320 sq. feet,
      so parking would require 2.2 million square feet.
If there is parking on a full 7 floors, each floor would occupy 300,000 square foot.
   Have a total of 8 floors devoted parking & car rental & retail sales and the top floor for flight operations
   Might have 3 parking floors below ground since drivers do not like to drive up too many floors in a garage

Vertiport income sources
- At $4 per arriving passenger = $46,000 daily * 200 days per year = $9.2 million
- Parking fees
- Sales on air taxi floor, rental of street floor perimeter to stores such as Starbucks.

Vertiport cost
In 1989 it cost $11,000 per parking space for a seven story parking garage
Thus 6,900 parking spaces in the garage would have cost $76 million.

Passenger area = 40,000 square feet
This assumes: each passenger will need 200 square feet of floor space
Assumes: worst case number of passengers is = 1 hour peak = 2,000
40,000 square feet (2,000 passengers * 200 sq. ft.)= 250' x 150'

Larger or smaller vertiport
This large vertiport is estimated for a region of approximately 400,000 people. (20,000 fliers/day)
The same vertiport design can probably be scaled up to population of 1 million and scaled down to 100,000.
A region with more than 1 million population will probably need more than a single vertiport.
Regions smaller than 100,000 might build vertiports on top of freeway park&rides (to be called park&fly?), building, parking lots, etc.
Example scaling of vertiport design: 1 acre = 43,560 square feet

Passengers/day	Width - feet	Length- feet	Area/floor	Floors of parking
20,000=baseline	600	500	6.9 acres	8
5,000	600	500	6.9 acres	2
80,000	1,200	1,000	27.6 acres	8

Used by passengers in wheel-chairs
The vertiport would have to be wheel-chair accessible
- but probably not have to roll a person's wheel chair onto the air taxi.

Used by passengers who are blind
The vertiport would be accessible to the blind.
Perhaps there would be a brail version of the smart card and some way to indicate direction to the correct door.

Baggage:
We assume that each person will deal with their own carry-on baggage.
There is not much extra room or weight allocation for baggage on the air taxi.
Each pilot would load/unload the baggage, just as do taxi and bus drivers.
Very long baggage: Examples: ski, tandem bike, etc.
– perhaps to travel on a cargo-only air taxi before or after the flight of the passenger

Quick Package Delivery
The air taxi service will provide an excellent way to quickly move small packages short distances.
There should be some way for a person to drop off and pickup packages without having to go the main floor of the vertiport.
The "quick package" should be able to travel somewhat like baggage.
Need to pay people to move a package from the drop off location at one vertiport to the pickup location at another vertiport.

Security
We assume that there will be no bomb threat to worry about.
The air taxis can not fly very far (e.g. to another country),
and can not carry enough passengers to be a threat (only 5 instead of hundreds of passengers).
Thus there will be no need for baggage inspection, etc., just as there are no inspections for passengers of buses, trains, etc.

Pressurized Skycars
Perhaps have some/all Skycars will have no pressure change during flight
– pressure change is very uncomfortable for a significant fraction of passengers

Misc. other notes, requirements, etc.
The vertiport would preferably operate 24 hours a day.

Elevators run thru the center of the building and connects all levels.
Stairs would be added for fire/safety purposes as necessary

Reminder – vertiport trips 50-500 miles = ¼ to 1.5 hours in the air
– air taxi trips are without restrooms, served meals/beverages.
Trip destinations: vertiport, airport, city, vacation destination (i.e. Disneyland)

Travelers will have choice of flying direct to destination or hopping there more quickly with several intermediate vertiports.
Travel to major destination will probably have 5 departures per average during rush hour – just in time – not scheduled
Upon landing most passengers will get off – but some passengers will continue on in the same air taxi.

Might lower disabled Skycars (those which can not be repaired locally) to the ground via a roof-mounted crane.
This will avoid having a large, seldom used freight elevator.

There should be a maximum of 4 doors associated to each air taxi landing site to prevent take-off/landing delays.

Parking spaces should be able to sense the presence of each parked vehicle
– and thus allow displaying the number of parking spaces available/floor when entering the facility

First floor should have drive thru section for shuttle busses/vans, and shops on the outer perimeter

Consider adding to this web page
Comparison of this passenger traffic with US airport traffic
(e.g. SeaTac has 4X the passenger traffic, for a region of about 10X the population)
Comparison of the cost and acreage of this vertiport with US airports
3D view of the vertiport
Show flights coming and going from all directions (360 degrees)
with steep climb/descent so as to minimize the number of people on the ground hearing the aircraft noise

Engine Out Vertiports would not require the very long engine-out or aborted take-off areas required by heliports and airports. A Skycar /air taxi will be able to land at a Vertiport in rare cases such as multiple engine failure. In the extremely rare case of concurrent failure of multiple engines the Skycar would deploy it's air-frame parachute to land the vehicle and passengers safely. {Need to consider use of air-frame parachute from the top of a tall building in the center of a city.}

Japan's idea of vertiport Described in Tokyo 2000 Aerospace Symposium
would occupy 4 to 5 acres and carry 3,000 passengers per day added 2/12/01
Image appears to be be for Bell 609 VTOL

Heliport for 3,000 lb Robinson helicopters can be on top of office buildings
image from Aviation International March 2001 added 3/12/01