Intermodal air facilities for the 21st century

Transportation in the next century will have to be much more flexible and convenient than today's systems in order to handle the volume of people and cargo that is projected. In order to improve our transportation system in a cost effective way we will need innovative means of tying our existing systems together and making each one more efficient. Historically, air transportation has been handled as an independent system with little thought given to access to other major modes other than automobiles. As a result we have created a very inefficient and time consuming air network which cannot be easily integrated with other systems, unlike the Europeans and Japanese who have integrated their systems very well. Tiltrotor technology gives us the opportunity to develop intermodal facilities, called vertiports, which can easily tie all transportation modes together in convenient locations with a minimum amount of land and relatively small costs. Vertiports can be an inexpensive means of providing communities with improved air transportation while reducing air and ground congestion that is becoming a major problem to all travelers.