Battleground: Ballot Box - Lawmakers Huddle: Flying Cars and State Laws

Donna Lowry: You may soon see air taxis flying above you as you're traveling on Georgia interstates. Beginning July 1st, a new law gives the Georgia Department of Transportation authority to regulate electric vertical takeoff and landing or eVTOL aircraft. In this week's Lawmakers' Huddle, I explain how the Jetsons cartoon of the past will now become the present reality in Georgia. Georgia is poised to become a leader in the use of urban transportation, small vehicles flying from one part of the state to another. Soon we'll see the flying people movers traveling to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. One of the leading visionaries at the Georgia Capitol who has worked for years to make it happen joins me.  

One of the leading visionaries at the George Capitol, who has worked for years to make it happen, joins me. Republican Representative Todd Jones of South Forsyth chairs the House Committee on Technology and Infrastructure Innovation. Chairman Jones, thank you for coming on Lawmakers Huddle.  

Todd Jones: Well, thank you so much for the invitation. We sure do appreciate it.  

Donna Lowry: Before we delve into the new law regarding air taxis and veriports    in  Georgia, could you provide us with an overview of what they are and how they will operate?  

Todd Jones: Sure. Well, let's take a step backward if you don't mind, because we are about to have a transportation revolution.  

We are going to be seeing, believe it or not, your products being delivered by drones at the end of this year from several Northern Arc Walmarts, and that's going to expand statewide in 2026.  

 Further, I'm sure you've already heard,, Tesla kicked off their robo-taxis, and simultaneously, Waymo in Atlanta has kicked off. So we're going to see through the rest of 2025 and the rest of 2026, we're gonna see this explosion of autonomous vehicles literally hitting our streets. And then finally, we are going to be looking in the air just like you said Donna and saying wait, we taking traffic off of the streets. We're taking cargo traffic off of the streets and at first we're Going to see them moving around Lily pad to Lily pad is what I call them. They're formerly called vertiports, but ultimately we're gonna start seeing several of our key cities really pieced together and you're gonna have the option to literally take it to the skies instead of to the road.  

Donna Lowry: Explain what it took to understand and develop the legislation over this brand-new transportation mode.  

Todd Jones: Well, when you are, as they say, shattering the ceiling, really the vision comes into how can we make the legislation work? The first thing we wanted to do was not, basically, have to redo the wheel every time. And hence, like you said in your introduction, we're gonna have the verticals underneath the Department of Transportation. Because other than Hartsfield, all of our general aviation facilities in the state are underneath the Georgia Department of Transportation. So we felt if the general airport facilities, if the heliports, we should also put the vertiports underneath the DOT. So that gave us what we think is a solid basis for the regulatory world that the vertiports are gonna have to live under. The second thing we needed to do was start to get different cities excited about being first. Cause let's face it, sometimes government doesn't want tobe first. Sometimes they'd rather see someone else be the tip of the spear and they come behind them after someone else makes those mistakes. We've seen Alpharetta and we've seen Roswell step up already and both of them have plans in action to go along the 400 corridor. Now, we're hoping Forsyth County. We're hoping Sandy Springs and others along 400 do that, too. But ultimately, it isn't just going to be 400. You're going to see it go throughout Metro Atlanta and then down into the other cities of Georgia.  

Donna Lowry: You have to get airspace?  

Todd Jones: Well, what's interesting is, like you said again in your introduction, these are vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. They are not in need of a quote runway like you see at Hartsfield or PDK or Charlie Brown in Atlanta, but rather a vertiport is gonna be about 43,000 square feet, which is about one acre. And that's gonna have four landing facilities, three of them for active, one for what we'll just call maintenance. All four will have the power generation from say a Georgia Power for one of our EMCs that has all of the electric power going into the eVTOL so they will be charged in 15 minutes. So effectively as one group is coming off the other group is coming on and say they're going to Hartsfield maybe putting on their luggage by the time they get off the plane come onto the eVTOL and then are about to leave about the 15 minutes they need to charge is over. So, what we're talking about from an infrastructure standpoint is you're going to see probably parking garages, buildings, open spaces, but basically 44,000 square feet being in a sense utilized as a vertical.  

Donna Lowry: So it is going, we're talking a quick turnaround for a lot of these and that had to happen it sounds like.  

Todd Jones: Yes, if you think of their business model, we are going to make the vertiports agnostic to an eVTOL company. Some states are choosing to say, no, there'll be one type of eVTOL. We'll go to one vertiport, almost like Boeing to Hartsfield, Airbus to PDK. We said, no. We believe in the free market. So, we want basically all the operators to go to any vertipot. That's super important to create competition and to create a price structure that we believe will be along the lines of an Uber XL or an Uber Black. So imagine having the price surety of an Uber XL to an Uber black, but also having the traffic security knowing you no longer have to put in, well, if I'm leaving at seven in the morning, chances are as a two hour drive to Hartsfield versus it being literally a 15 minute flight to Hartsfield. And we're talking a chain, a sea change in the way transportation is done in our state.  

Donna Lowry: I think sea change is the right word, because I think as people hear you talk about this, they understand what it is to use rideshare and what that means. They will use the interstates as their flight path. What infrastructure changes, you've talked about them a little bit, needed to accommodate all of this. Is there anything else you wanted to add on that?  

Todd Jones: Sure. The FAA has given the guidance that today we can use our major state roads, for instance, Georgia 400, and we can our interstates, just like you said, and can use anything from 85 to 75 and 20, etc. So that's the guidance we have coming from the FAA today, because anything over 500 feet, the FAA controls across our entire country. So, we had to work in partnership with the FAA to ensure that we could get these literally, quote, into the air. My goal, and if everything goes well, the FIFA president and Governor Kemp will land at GWCC for the very first World Cup match in July of next year, truly showing that the state of Georgia is leading in air mobility in this country.  

Donna Lowry: And if anybody can make it happen, I believe in you. I believe you can make that happen. I appreciate that. Now, how will safety be ensured for both the air taxi passengers and motorists below?  

Todd Jones: Sure. So first and foremost on the flight path, they are to be what we all call the right away or the easement. So not necessarily above the traffic, but to the side of the traffic. Second, every eVTOL company to date, now, I can't tell you what's going to happen tomorrow, but to date, they have anywhere between four and six redundant engine systems already programmed and designed into their eVTOL. And each eVTOL has its own parachute system. Not the individual passengers, but the actual vehicle itself. So, if God forbid there is a malfunction, not only are there four to six redundant systems depending on the manufacturer, but there's also a parachute system that comes out. So we would expect it to hit the ground somewhere between 15 and 20 miles an hour. Now we don't want that to happen at all, but in terms of the safety of the passengers and the safety the individuals below, we feel as if we are putting into effect every safety mechanism necessary to ensure the safety all Georgians.  

Donna Lowry: And this is why you've been working on this for several years. Explain the process. You had a study committee and more to get here.  

Todd Jones: Yeah, this is truly, and I loved your introduction about the Jetsons. In so many ways, you're thinking about the front of a jigsaw puzzle, right? You have a thousand pieces, the cover, and we had come up with what is the vision of air mobility in the state of Georgia? My vision is, at first we're gonna have four people, then eventually 10. I think eventually we're going to end up with 50 person eVTOLs where you're gonna live possibly in the Macon/Bibb area. But come to work in the Atlanta area. Or, possibly live in Valdosta and work and make and work in Macon/Bibb.  

The second thing we're gonna do, as we know we have a massive logistics industry in our state and all want to do is make it better, maybe with the port. The trains, the internal ports that we have. Well, we also see air taxis taking on a very important part of that cargo system within our state. And then finally, I mentioned drones before, but we're going to see drones instead of just taking five pounds. We're eventually going to see drones be taking 50 pounds, and that's also going to be helping us. So, if you can imagine all that vision is effectively the cover of the jigsaw puzzle box. We had to put out all thousand pieces and say, OK, the FAA controls above 500 feet. How do we work with them? How do we make sure that we have the safety of not just the participants and the people inside, but also the vehicles themselves? How do get cities to step up and want to make sure that vertical ports are part of their infrastructure? We're speaking to planners in all kinds of regions of our state saying in the future, if you have a parking garage designed today, how can you intend to 15 years retrofit that to something else because with autonomous vehicles and ride sharing, will a parking garage even be necessary? Second, as you are giving a permit for a parking garage or for a building, should you also be considering what does a vertiport do in terms of your master plans? We have all these things coming together inside of that jigsaw puzzle that we needed to piece them together before we did this legislation. We're super proud of legislation, but to your point, it was years in the making.  

Donna Lowry: And this is really a mindset change for a lot of people. Just getting everyone's head around this concept is difficult, isn't it?  

Todd Jones: Tremendously. We know through generational studies, and I'll just take autonomous vehicles because we have more data on that than we do on air taxis, we already know my generation, for instance, Gen X, we are effectively a generation in Georgia that well over 50% do not want to quote give up their independence and give up driving whereas you can counter that with Gen Z and Gen Z is pretty much ready to give it up completely and let the car drive them and, of course, we have the boomers and the millennials and everything so you're absolutely right we have a generational type inertia within not just our state but within our entire country around autonomous vehicles. I expect once we have more studies done we do have some done that we're going to see the similar type of generational inertia around air mobility, where we're going to be certain generations grasping onto and embracing it immediately once it's available in their app. And literally others are going to take a little while to get there.  

Donna Lowry: Let's talk about Georgia in particular. You've talked about Georgia being a leader in this. How did that happen?  

Todd Jones: Ego and not wanting to be second place. I mean, what did Ricky Bobby say? You're either first or you're last. Well, I want Georgia to be first at everything. And at the end of the day, we had lost, if you think about leadership, we had last in the last 20 years from a technology standpoint, we had loss on nanotech, biotech. But when you started to look out in the future, you see air mobility, you see 3D printing and creative manufacturing, you see what we're doing in autonomous vehicles and we're leading the way. And suddenly, you start realizing that the state of Georgia can beat the Research Triangle, the state of Georgia can be the Silicon Valley. And what we needed to do was take all the resources that we had, not just in corporations, but in government and private partnership, and then also within our workforce and within our university system and also with our technical college system or K-12 system, and put together basically these forces literally going in the same exact direction. We can't have all six forces going north. We've got to need all six forces going due north. So, we needed to put, you know, I'll just say the North Star in front of us and that North Star to us is leadership in areas where frankly no one has taken that position. So, we're going to go ahead fill that vacuum. We're going be number one in air mobility. We are going to be number one in accretive manufacturing. We will be number in autonomous vehicles and literally the rest of the country is going to follow us.  

Donna Lowry: It's unbelievable to think of all of that. I want to get back to the drones a little bit. So that's what we're going to see first. Explain that and then how soon will we see some of these air taxis?  

Todd Jones: Sure, the drones, you're gonna see most likely, I'll say fourth quarter this year just to be conservative, but my hunch is it'll be third quarter of this year. You're seeing partnerships, for instance, between small stores like Walmart, ha-ha, and also Nwing, which is a drone company, and they have already started in Texas. They made the mistake of starting there instead of in Georgia, but they are rectifying that mistake in coming here, and we appreciate that. I say that tongue in cheek, but we do appreciate their partnership, but most importantly, us being able to get drones into the air, because I want you to think about something for a moment, Donna. About 5% of Georgia's population, just like the rest of the country, is quote homebound. They are not part of, I'll just say, the ecosystem that many of us live in. They be going out to a restaurant, going to a pharmacy, going into the grocery store, etc. Now, there are certain programs that do give them some transportation, but in many ways they are drones deliver prescriptions to them so they don't have to find a way to get to the pharmacy? How can autonomous vehicles decrease the cost to a local government so they can provide greater autonomy to those five percent? We need to be thinking like that. Because those 5% of Georgians, which that makes up, if you think about it, we're almost 11 million people. That's a half a million people or more. We want to get them – quote - back in with us. And how do we do that? Drones are going to allow us to do that, to get products to them. Autonomous vehicles are going allow them to get out and basically allow cities and counties to do at a more cost effective manner. Super excited about that. And that's happening this year. We expect air mobility to launch. Like I said, we expect, we hope the first flight. Basically, it kicks off the World Cup here in Atlanta in July of 2026.  

Donna Lowry: Unbelievable. And I'm so glad you're thinking about the elderly and people who may have medical issues who are confined to their homes. You guys have really had to think a really really big big picture, haven't you?  

Todd Jones: Yeah, because look, look, many of us are fortunate enough that, you know, you got a car in the driveway and you got, you know, the legs to be able to get out to it and drive and you have the financial resources to put the gas into the tank and make everything happen. And I'm happy for all those Georgians that can do that. But for those Georgian's who aren't as fortunate or frankly, like you said, may have medical issues or elderly, we wanted to make sure that this technology revolution wasn't about the 95%. It was about the 100%. And we want to make sure that everyone's included in it. And this is a great way to do it. And being able to help those folks is just so important. And that's truly a part of the mission.  

Donna Lowry: Now as you wrap up, is there anything else you want to add?  

Todd Jones: No, the only thing I want to add is, I say it all the time to folks during speeches, and that's the F word, the four-letter F word, and that is fail. Not the one that immediately came to all your listeners’ minds. And I say that because we are going to fail in this journey in a creative manufacturing, air mobility, autonomous vehicles, drones. And when I mean fail, I just mean oops, we learned to do something a little bit better. You know, we all heard the line before. Edison found out 10,000 ways not to make the light bulb. And then finally he figured it out. Well, we're going to have a great upper right-hand trajectory. I know that. I know our state knows that. I know all the players know that, but I also know we're going to have a couple of times where we're going to fall. And I hope that the entire state rallies around and says, we love the vision. We believe in the vision, you know what? Get back up, dust off a little bit, and figure out a way to do it better. And let's do it all together.  

Donna Lowry: So there'll be more coming in January during the legislative session. You see this, it's evolving, isn't it?  

Todd Jones: A thousand percent. It's no different. The AV Law, the autonomous vehicle law that we did in 17, led by Senator Ed Setzler and then also by Representative Trey Kelly. I was also one of the five signers on that bill. We were talking, we may have to do one or two, I'll say nip and tucks to that bill just to make sure that Tesla's Robotaxi, Waymo and others are capable and frankly encouraged to be in our state. Frankly, I don't want the next test to be in Austin, Texas. I don't want it to be San Francisco, California. I want it here in Georgia. Pick a city, any city, and I promise you Georgians will pull through and do it well.  

Donna Lowry: And, the technology is changing fast, and you're ready to move with it. So that sounds great. 

 Well, who knew when Hannah Barbera created the animated show, The Jetsons, in the 1960s that we'd actually see it come to life this way.  

Thank you so much, Chairman Todd Jones for giving us insight into the age of George Jetson and flying vehicles and so much more.  

Todd Jones: Thank you, Donna.  

Donna Lowry: For GPB News, I'm Donna Lowry