Is U2C serious? Help me make it make sense....

[thelakelander]

Our roads aren’t built to accommodate autonomous vehicles

“The biggest challenge to self-driving cars is the biggest challenge to most major social changes: infrastructure. We want to integrate cool new things, but new things rely on old things. Fixing streets and signs and sidewalks paves the way to a particular vision of a cleaner, more accessible future.” — Meg Leta Jones, emerging technologies researcher, to Politico

To me, this is the biggest obstacle and its not changing anytime soon. From a transit perspective, projects like the U2C are more realistic when operating on dedicated right of way, which will remove many of the conflicts and challenges mentioned elsewhere in the article.

[jaxoNOLE]

Dedicated ROW also means AVs have to compete against and demonstrate superior value relative to streetcars, BRT, light rail, etc.. -- all of which are expensive to execute but don't have tens to hundreds of billions in future R&D costs to consider.

It's ironic that the fix for many of the AV shortcomings also renders their most impressive benefits moot. It's been well documented here how passenger capacity is expected to suffer comparing U2C to the skyway or even a bus route alternative, while at the same time U2C will cost no less per mile than proven alternatives.

Have there been any cost revisions post-pandemic to the U2C estimate? I would imagine that price tag to have eclipsed $400M by a significant margin, in line with other construction increases, meaning the LOGT earmark for the Skyway conversion probably won't come close to being enough.