This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Why are tax dollar being spent making it a little faster for rich FiDi people to get to JFK. Take the A train like the rest of us.
There is so much infrastructure NYC could improve:
And that is just what I can think in the moment.
Take the A train like the rest of us.
This! Instead of burning the money on useless garbage, put it towards the existing underfunded infrastructure which would benefit way more people!
It's about doing the most to distance themselves from common people.
This is going to be really high cost though. If only there was a way to move people en masse around a city, with a reliable and frequent service, funded by tax payer dollars so the cost for an individual is extremely low and affordable..
Alas, no such thing has ever been invented.
Well just think about it. You're talking about some underground network of tunnels that can shuttle hundreds of thousands of people per day from place to place, probably noisy and dirty, probably full of homeless people, and you'd have to have constant signs and announcements telling people where to go.
That's just madness, and no sane person would stand for it.
That sounds filthy and dangerous. Am I supposed to be physically near the plebs? Share my air with them? Sit in a seat someone else has already sat in? My god, the abomination!
Ya, how come NYC never thought of creating the NYC subway system.
NYC has mass transit. Better than most American cities anyway.
This article or whatever is likely just an internet fever dream that will never amount to anything. However it is interesting to imagine a large scale transit system that is entirely point-to-point for everyone. No stations you need to migrate to in order to experience mass transit. No areas it doesn’t go to. No crowded train cars. Mass transit does come with a lot of compromises.
Flying taxis sound dumb to me in practice but in theory it’s the ideal form of mass transit, at least from the perspective of riders’ time and convenience. Maybe someday we’ll have the technology to enable something like this. It won’t be lithium ion powered propeller drones in 2025, though.
Imagine all the problems with cars today.
They're noisy, use a lot of energy, waste a lot of space, and are prone to fatal accidents.
Now make the car fly. You have just made all of those problems exponentially worse.
I for one would be furious if there were mini-helicopters constantly swooping by my bedroom window in the middle of the night.
I just said that flying taxis are not the solution. I don’t know what the solution is but it will only come when technology addresses those energy, noise, and safety concerns. It’s not hard to imagine them all being addressed though. Energy storage keeps improving. Fusion energy is bound to be 30 years away for only another century or two. And the noise from early cars is 99.5% gone after so many years of evolution. I firmly believe that the safety issue is human drivers, not cars, and we have solutions coming for all that too.
You know what I hate worse than cars, though? Roads. We’ve conceded so much space to roads. The ground should be for people, bikes, animals, and ecosystems. You say that putting traffic in the air makes it noisier but I’m not so sure… it would be more removed than it is when it’s all right here on the ground whooshing past our houses. I think the future is likely underground or in the sky. And hopefully the need for transit can be reduced a lot too. That’s also easier to imagine in the telework age we’re living in.
yes but in theory
I guess a better word is abstract. A massively point to point transit system would be ideal for riders and this would bring more time to their lives and productivity to their jobs. Anyone who thinks the commuter train is the pinnacle terminus of transportation visions doesn’t ride one daily.
The same could be said about the internet. Surely, a direct connection between every point would make the internet ultimately fast, better experience, etc etc, but this rapidly becomes a huge problem the bigger the system gets.
In fact, we already have a massive point to point transit system, and it totally sucks ie cars. As soon as you start to take a look at the bigger picture and consider all the variables, you start to see the utopia just isn't. Congestion, pollution, upkeep, management, infrastructure, it's all exponentiated by the point to point system.
The system most countries with decent public transport have is the hub/spoke model, where massive transports (trains, planes, buses) travel between hubs, and smaller feeder services (buses, light rail, taxis) transport people from the hub to the destination. No system is perfect, but this is as close to it as you can get.
I used to take the train every day, my experience was fine, I would argue that bad experiences aren't due to trains but due to poor investment and management.
> I would argue that bad experiences aren’t due to trains but due to poor investment and management.
I agree. I used trains to get to school as a commuter.
Nothing makes a train more unusable than not knowing when it will arrive at the destination (it was sometimes hours late) or if it will show up at all (the schedule was constantly changing, and some trains would just be cancelled when equipment was broken).
It's always "in a couple of years" with air taxis, isn't it?
They're called helicopters and are cost prohibitive.
I feel like you could teach classes in urban planning and city management built entirely around sharing Eric Adams campaign promises and then explaining why they're the opposite of what anyone should be doing if you want to spend city money to maximize the health/security/prosperity of your citizens.
I'll believe it when I see it. (I won't)
Absolute nonsense, flying taxis don´t even attempt to fix traffic. Instead they are just a workaround to fly over traffic jams, available exclusively for a few very rich people. New York should better build something that improves the overall flow of traffic, so all people benefit from it, like a citywide network of safe bike lanes for example.
... and first deadly air taxi accident by 2027.
You mispelled 2025*
Nah 2024 when they are doing tests.
Closely followed by an even more deadly ground accident from the falling debris...
Remember Uber Air? Still waiting...
And several mini 9/11 by 2026
The air traffic around the city is already insane, weren't they already talking about trying to reduce it? I can't imagine this happens
Multipass.
Cool story bro
Air cannot be eletric. Quit messing with my head!
Dam, I thought I was good at intentionally misunderstanding but you well and truly beat me here! Bravo!
