Cap and Trade Funding
Pass amended legislation that enables local governments to use California’s carbon cap and trade funds to support commuter flights for the following uses:
“subsidize “ flights for low income workers.
“financially back-stop” flights for new Air Metro Transit commuter routes.
Introduction
At half the cost and 4 times as fast as commuting via an automobile, all without the need or costs of a building or maintaining a road, UAM brings the Bay Area’s outlying cities like Stockton and Sacramento within commuting range of the employee starved, high wage paying employers located in the Silicon Valley.
An affordable Air Metro would give high speed, commuter access to existing jobs in the Bay Area and so be a much more efficient use of capital, than creating jobs in low income areas or building affordable housing in high cost areas.
Cap and Trade
$11 billion dollars have been appropriated to-date by the California Legislature for state agencies implementing GHG emission reduction programs via the Cap and Trade program.
California’s Governor proposed an FY 2019-20 state budget allocating $447M for Low Carbon Transportation investments alone and substantial funding allocated to low income families via California Air Resource Board (CARB).
Unfortunately none of this funding has been allocated as yet to support Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a potential tool in California’s toolbox of solutions that can be brought to bear on ending our state’s affordable housing crisis.
Subsidize flights for low income workers
Tapping into Cap & Trade funding allocated for priority populations, local government could begin to “subsidize ” UAM routes to make commuter flights affordable for low and medium income workers. This subsidy could be called the Dollar Flight Club as it would only cost a low income worker $1 per ticket to catch a flight to work. The Dollar Flight Club could be very quickly be transformational for large numbers of low income workers.
For example, you could be working a minimum wage job in a Bay Area outlying city earning $10 per hour giving you a total income of $1,600 per month. So as not to be economically stressed by your housing costs, this level of income means you could only afford housing costing $480 per month. There are few housing options in California available for that low a price beyond living in your car, a van or out on the street.
However, if you caught a Dollar Flight Club commuter ride on the air metro to go work at one of the 40,000 plus jobs at SFO for example, which pays a minimum wage of $18 per hour, you would almost double your income. This would mean doing the same kind of work with the only difference being you are working in a higher paying location. You would not have to re-skill, you would not have to move from your home town, you would not have to endure a super commute or hope that some benevolent organization would build affordable housing in your location.
Because you are now earning $2,800 per month, you could now afford $850 per month in rent or mortgage without exceeding the 30% housing cost threshold that indicates housing costs are economically stressing. By using the high speed “Air Metro” for only $1 per flight, you are changing your employment location to a higher paying geography. You are now presented with non-economically stressing housing options that are readily available in your existing home town.
The Dollar Flight Club can make thousands of homes now affordable to low income workers without having to build a single new home or put up the price of new, market rate housing to subsidize the cost of making affordable homes available for low income workers.
The potential result of an initiative like the Dollar Flight Club initiative could be trans-formative for our economy and help easy the income gap. The Dollar Flight Club flight subsidy could be based on published income sliding scales, for example something like this scale based on Yolo County income scales:
The Dollar Flight Club could see as many as 250,000 low income workers commuting into high paying Bay Area jobs on a $1 dollar flight to work everyday, with the cost to the Cap and Trade program equal to approximately $ 1 billion per year, which is an incredibly efficient use of capital.
Extremely low cost of commuter flights become possible due to the game changing nature of electric flight. It costs approximately $1.50 in electricity per half hour of flight in a small, 4 seat commuter, electrically powered aircraft. If you make that aircraft autonomous, you now have one of the lowest cost and fastest means of commuter travel ever invented.
This means that a subsidy from Cap and Trade funding is only needed to catalyze mass transit commuting for low income workers via Urban Air Mobility technologies and an air metro is not dependent on subsidies over the long term. Cap and Trade subsidy for low income workers can fade away over time as employers existing transit and parking subsidies can make up the costs of flights so a low income worker would still only need to pay $1 per flight.
Financially Back-Stop Routes
The “Greater” Bay Area can take a page out of Europe’s low cost airline playbooks by mirroring how un-serviced airports in Europe have been opened up to travelers by low cost airlines through the use of subsidies from destinations. A destination that is currently undeserved by any airline have found they can attract thousands of new tourists to their destinations by subsidizing as well as backstopping a regular flight into their local airport. The flight might only cost the traveler a few dollars, such as those routes pioneered by Ryan Air, yet the total dollar spend of those tourists easily covers the back stop costs of establishing the route.
An outlying Bay Area city like Stockton could financially back-stop new routes for a 135 operator to fly regular routes into an employer or employer’s Vertiport. Bay Area outlying cities can “financially back stop” UAM routes to de-risk routes for operators by tapping into the California Air Resource Board (CARB) funding specifically allocated to UAM from carbon Cap and Trade sources.
A financial back-stop would only draw cash while a route is being established and as the route became used by commuters, the back-stop funding would reduce over time. A financial back-stop would ensure that routes for an air metro would be established all over the greater Bay Area, and not just in the more affluent enclaves.