With my sincere thanks for your input, stuving (you are apparently even more proficient than me at dealing with the vagaries of our forum's search facility), I have now moved and merged a couple of topics here, under this revised heading.

CfN. 

 
We did have this lot before, in 2021, when an initial study was started. The general tenor of the comments then was highly sceptical about the whole concept. And note that VA (or Bristol Live, anyway) were promising flying taxis in Bristol by 2023. But, I wonder, has anyone has shifted their opinion about the feasibility of this a bit by now?

 
"I have an important meeting to attend in the Council House in Bristol: please fly me to College Green." 

 
Looks interesting, but a range of only (up to) 100 miles? And does that assume there's a charger at the other end?

 
From the BBC:

 


So it might appear that it will not put mass transit schemes such as passenger trains to Portishead at risk as it could not cope with the volumes - hopefully no delay to such schemes while an official study is done to confirm that.

 
I reckon the flying taxis will be flying just before the Bristol Subway and Tram open.

(Maybe the Portishead line will have opened the month before too)

 

It has. I tried flying one. It was harder than I expected, and I had expected it to be hard. It remains entirely possible  to build something on the lines of the multi-rotor drone, adding stability, and having it largely controlled by AI using the new 5G network, it just won't be cheap. Or very sensible for general public transport.

I am confused though. It's a WRECA baby, so obviously isn't linked to Marvin Rees wanting another term as Mayor. It can't be the ineffective Mr Bowles, because he has decided officially that things will go better without him, and isn't standing for re-election as the supreme spiritual leader of WRECA. It isn't August, the traditional month for innovative or whacky transport solutions to hit the papers, like the cable cars, pods or monorails. Add to that the company involved - is this the same Atkins that recommended closure of the Severn Beach line and conversion to a guided busway? Working with it, and providing much-needed income during a pandemic, is WRECA, the successor of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership's Joint Transport Committee that took the plans for a network of electrically powered trams capable of carrying 400 passengers at a time, and ended up with a couple of new roads and some new bus lanes.

The real clue lies in what MVR S&T has cleverly spotted - United Airlines' idea for getting passengers from a distant city centre to the airport. This is where a cheap helicopter service will really come into its own. A few helipads dotted around the city and a half-dozen vehicles should suffice, whisking business passengers and rock stars the few miles to their private planes. It could also be used by any future mayor heading for, as an example, Kuala Lumpur. The distance is short and there is already air traffic control in place. It is clever, but of course it would be met with outrage by the green lobby. It therefore makes sense to disguise it as a public transport project. It has been done successfully before - has anyone else spotted that far more buses on the Long Ashton to Somewhere Near Temple Meads segregated MetroBust route go to the airport in normal times than to the park and ride?

 
Well an american airline thinks its a good idea.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56020650

United Airlines plans to buy 200 flying electric taxis that it hopes will fly passengers to the airport within the next five years.

The US airline is one of the first major carriers to commit to the purchase of flying taxis.

United Airlines will also invest in flying taxi firm Archer as part of a $1.1bn (£800m) deal to develop the aircraft.

The aircraft need regulatory approval before the purchase can go ahead.

 
I suspect that we WILL one day see flying taxis, possibly even automatic ones.
I therefore see no harm in the private sector investing money in trials, tests, research, and experiments.
It is not in my view a proper purpose on which to spend public money. When eventually achieved it sounds likely to be expensive, and only available to a minority. Therefore should not be publicly funded.

 
Agree with your point about overexcited reporting.

All Atkins have said is a wooly statement about carrying out an "assessment" - which is fine for them, that's their bread and butter. If someone offered you £2.5M to state the "bleeding obvious" in two years time, would you turn it down?  You cannot "hail" a passing flying taxi and say you want to go to wherever. Clearance has to obtained to fly from A to B, what is (apparently) proposed would almost certainly have to operate under VFR, so operational hours would be very limited. Anything other than VFR would require considerable Air Traffic Control input - not available at the drop of a hat (or the drop of a "for hire" sign !) and at a cost. It would be no quicker that hiring a helicopter today - and have you seen how much that costs......? David Beckham might be able afford it - I can't.

I am afraid this whole thing is just a total waste of good money.

I'll see you back on this thread in 2023 - or at Lulsgate and we'll see how many airborne taxis are in the sky that day    Actually, we'll be lucky if we see Easyjet or Ryanair the way things are going 

 

Well, if you go back to the OP, it was about a research study led by Atkins. What Atkins say they actually intend to do is examine exactly the question you raise. The rest comes from Vertical  Aerospace and overexcited reporting.

 

...or a footbridge for Pilning?

 
No one has mentioned the really difficult part - just how will this aerial traffic be controlled ?

Road, rail and (to some extent) water traffic is relatively easily controlled but still people run into each other. Air traffic is controlled by a very complex (and expensive) air traffic control system - but still people fly into each other.
Much of this control relies on the human part of the chain playing by the "rules". The train driver is meant to stop at a red signal, the car driver is meant to drive on the correct side of the road.
The aviation side is far more complex - it is probably true to say that most airliners (which are already incredibly safe) would be even safer if there was nobody sitting up the front ! However, people just would not fly in an aircraft with no pilot - which is strange when you read accident reports like the very recent celebrity accident in the US, where the pilot who was flying under Visual Flight Rules, flew into cloud ...... closely followed by a hillside.
Someone has already mentioned Tomorrow's World - this proposal would certainly have appeared on this programme and like most ideas shown there would have then disappeared into oblivion.

If there is £2.5million available to fund such a pie-in-the-sky idea could it not be spent on something more realistic ? Hydrogen/electric/cow dung powered wheeled taxis or buses perhaps ?

 

As TG suggests, these things are essentially helicopters. Whilst helicopters are indespensible in certain niche roles, they have proven themselves to be of limited use as public transport.

 
Also being considered in America, though even the proponents suggest 5 years rather than 2 years until use.

I have no doubt that these will be used eventually both in the UK and in the USA, I do however think that timescales are unduly optimistic.

 
I have realised this is very bad news. The chimera of hydrogen and battery powered trains being used as an excuse not to electrify is bad enough, the one of electric flying taxis will probably now justify no investment by HMG in any form of terrestrial transport - "just wait for the electric flying taxis"!

 
If it was DfT, flying pigs would be more likely

 
I thought the helicopter had already been invented?

 
Some taxi drivers can be a little lax in following the rules of the road, and will likely be just as lax in the air. So we'll probably need flying rozzers too!

 
Not a bad idea, presuming that the vehicles are electrically powered.
Most unlikely to be achievable in the near term.
How much will they cost ?
CAA approval ? Cost of trained pilots ?
Insurance ? If the machine kills someone on the ground ? The occupants will presumably accept the small but real risk of accident, but those on the ground have no choice.
Society accepts the loss of lives on the roads, some of whom are completely innocent passers by, but a new risk though probably very small may be less accepted.

I expect that such vehicles will eventually be used, but not in the near term.

 
I quickly checked the date.

 
This does remind me of the sort of thing that would appear once on Tomorrow's World and then maybe quite a few years later in a documentary about the difficulties of predicting technology.

 

Or indeed here - https://m.atkinsglobal.com/en-GB/projects/cambridgeshire-guided-busway

 
More appropriate pictures here.

https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/flying-pigs.html

 

 
From Bristol Live


Also at https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/flying-taxis-take-uk-skies-23392262