A Volocopter unmanned air taxi transport will start operating in Paris in summer 2020
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The lack of travel has given lots of cities time to think, reorganise and re-envisage what travel will look like in the future when everyone gets back their travel wings. For Barcelona, this has led to more pedestrianisation and for Venice, rerouting cruise ships.
For Paris, this means turning the Champs-Elysées into a giant garden and beginning an ambitious plan to roll out a transport network of flying taxis–to be fully operational by 2030.
The trial begins in Paris this summer, in June 2021. And it’s a big plan; Marie-Claude Dupuis, director of strategy, innovation and development at RATP, told Le Figaro that he plans for there to be thousands of flights every day. By the Paris summer Olympics in 2024, the plan would be for there to be lots of demonstration flights, with people on board.
The Local reported that the scheme is being rolled out through RATP, which runs the Paris public transport system, in tandem with Aéroports de Paris (ADP) and Choose Paris Region, the government agency established to promote the French capital.
According to the Managing Director of ADP, Edward Arkwright, the taxis are the holy grail of inner city travel: they don’t make lots of noise, they are low-carbon, the infrastructure requires less maintenance and expense and they can save time, which would otherwise be spent navigating Parisian traffic.
A Volocopter air taxi prototype in a test flight on October 22, 2019 in Singapore.
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At present, a taxi ride from La Défense, the office district west of Paris, to Charles de Gaulle airport in the north, can take 40 minutes. In the flying taxis, this will be cut to a 15-minute ride.
The taxis run on electricity, some on hydrogen but they are still too expensive–designers will have to work out how to carry up to six passengers, instead of the current two, to make the system cost-effective. It is also planned to take out the pilot’s seat and fly the taxis via remote control on the ground.
It’s not the only electric flying taxi in Paris; the Seabubble uses foil technology to transport people along the river Seine.
