If you live in the Austin area, or any major metropolitan, traffic can give you extreme headaches. As cities continue to grow, traffic becomes worse and worse. Aside from building/improving roads, the look should turn to how we travel.

The use of Urban Aerial Mobility may be closer of a reality than you think, but with some work still needed. The biggest challenge right now is an agreement between local and federal government.

General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation Seleta Reynolds says she is hoping the innovation comes and comes soon as the city of LA prepares for the 2028 Olympics. Reynolds says she wants the city to be a “model city of autonomous vehicles for the world.”

When it comes to getting autonomous vehicles in the sky and becoming a reality for the world, the vehicles have to be approved at first according to Johnathan Hartman, Disruptive Technologies Lead at Lockheed Martin.

Aside from having the vehicles approved, is an agreement between the levels of government. Reynolds said that this is a key component to the implications of this type of transportation. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy for the US Department of Transportation Finch Fulton says that if there is no agreement between these two levels of government then “we all lose.”

Reynold also says that the government only controls what goes on in the sky, but not what happens on the ground.

“The FAA may let things fly, but the city is the one that lets them land,” Reynolds said.

Aside from the government stand point, safety is a very important aspect or as Van Espahbodi of Starburst Accelerator said an “important theme.”

The talk of safety is important for many of these companies due to the recent plane crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX8s that weren’t not even a year old. Reynolds even brought up the Southwest Airlines engine failure that occurred in early 2018 that resulted in the airline’s first death.

People also expressed concern with safety when it came to the fact that there would be no person on the vehicle. Reynolds said that there needs to be humans in these vehicles. When you think about a pilot or flight attendant, they are not just there to fly the aircraft, they are doing many different things that makes sure everything works.

Keep your eyes open. This may all seem far away and may be something that is far in the future, but Hartman says there has very big strides when it comes to autonomy. The Olympics come back to the United State in 2028 and the United States may prove the world with urban autonomy vehicles.