Most everyone thinks we have too few lanes of highway, when stuck in traffic. We tend to think socialist systems never produce enough. What if our socialist road system actually built too many road lanes?
All airplanes can taxi. We have had the technology to produce personal aircraft since the first production model airplane rolled down a runway and took flight. We could have runways every couple of miles, (much less payment than highways everywhere). You land, then drive the last two miles to where you are going. Any time you travel more than like 5 miles, you should be in the air.
Instead of personal flight, all we have are air buses. One maker even calls themselves that. Then we can only fly if we are going more than a 5 hour drive away. Flight is super expensive otherwise. We have masses of people going through airports and a 40 minute drive from the air port, also means that you only save time by flying long distances. You aren't booking a flight for a 30 mile tripe. I think you should be flying on 30 mile trips.
The reason we are not all in the air is because of the DOT and the FAA imposing massive amounts of cost on flying and on developing vehicles considered safe for roads, (something had to do with something light enough to fly) combined with the lowered cost of driving by there being so many highways.
The highways are overbuilt. It would be cheaper to fly than to have a lane of highway for every car. This is the socialist calculation problem in action. I'm convinced we would all be in the air without the government.
In before, "but vertical take-off." I'm talking about technology that is cheap, well understood, and could have been built for the masses as far back as 1945. Maybe VTOL is the future of personal flight. I'm talking about what could have been the past and what could be now, with tech that has long existed.
There is no reason why Ford and Toyota couldn't be cranking out $30,000 4 passenger airplanes, with wings that automatically fold up and drive down the road, at a rate of 4000 units a day per model. Today, a Ford Ecoboost 3L aluminum engine would be fantastic in a 4 passenger airplane. There should be 500 million of them in the air.