Air taxi will soon become a reality. They will dramatically change the nature of travel, taking the well-heeled off the road. For short, intercity and intra-city travel, these taxis will replace cars, within range of modern drones capable of carrying passengers. For long distances that call for traveling by plane, air taxis will take well and corporate passengers from the city center to the airport and airport to the city center. The biggest impact, however, will be on the economics of high-speed rail projects.
High-speed rail competes with air travel for relatively short distances that do not guarantee flight capture. To travel by plane, you will have to do the full business of traveling from city to airport somewhere on the periphery of the city through congested streets, check in at least 45 minutes before departure and, then, the destination airport. But after landing, you will have to queue again. Behind slow moving people to catch another vehicle to fight through the traffic to exit the airport and finally reach your destination.
Suppose an air passenger takes 45 minutes to reach the airport from his office in the city, 45 minutes to check-in, airport security, wait and boarding, 15 minutes to land and exit from the destination airport, and 45 minutes to reach the destination city. This means air travel includes 150 minutes of non-travel time, plus the time taken to fly. Train stations are usually close to the city center and the time taken for the entire journey outside the actual travel time by train is very less.
So, to travel a distance that takes about two and a half hours to cover by train, a traveler can actually prefer rail travel to flight. The longer the distance and the longer it takes to cover the distance, the greater the incentive to fly.
What air taxi does is significantly reduce the non-flight time for travel by flight. Instead of spending an hour and a half, a passenger can spend just 20 minutes commuting to and from the airport (some air taxis are seeing top speeds in excess of 300 kmph – California-based Joby plans a top speed of 320 kmph. per hour and a range of 241 km).
So, the pre-sky taxi benefit of 150 minutes which shrinks trains, post-sky taxi, to 80 minutes. The distance over which trains offer a distinct advantage over flight is greatly reduced.
But doesn’t it include a cost dimension? If the government did not subsidize high-speed rail, the cost would be comparable to air travel. And there’s really no reason to subsidize high-speed rail travel. By high-speed rail travel, we do not mean travel up to about 160 kmph, which is possible with the existing rolling stock, provided the track is ready for it. For truly high-speed trains that travel at or around 300 kmph, the track needs to be separate, not just rolling stock.
Expenditure on upgrading existing track, removing too many bends and curves, to ensure that there are no running lines on the railway platform (so that a train standing at the station does not prevent other trains from continuing their journey) And improving the quality the track would be fully justified to allow the existing rolling stock to run at a technically optimal speed. After all, there are huge positive externalities to a good rail network that allows people to move across the country. But the same doesn’t go for high-speed rail. It should justify itself on its own merits. Air taxi makes it a bit daunting.
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