Charging $3 for bus riders is controversial within the public transportation sphere, nevermind the $20 a car taxi can cost. Unless there's something about flying taxis that would make them price competitive with a $3 bus trip, it's hardly public transportation.
If there were automated and electricity was cheap its easy to imagine them being cost competitive vs a bus trip of the same distance just because they're so much faster. Making them price competitive is just a matter of how much the state is willing to subsidise them.
They are only faster because we refuse to build infrastructure for public transport. A Bus rapid transit system using one dedicated lane of traffic can move up to 30k per hour. Maybe we should use automation to build efficient public transit, instead of imagining hundreds of millions of private automated cars clogging the roads and robo taxis flying over those clogged roads. Build some light rail and buses with dedicated lanes, and use automated 4 passenger vehicles for “first mile, last mile”.
