I can't help but wonder when JTA is finally going to stop deluding itself with this pie in the sky fantasy of clown cars mingling with downtown traffic and just build a normal streetcar system like they should have planned to do in the first place.
There's a special kind of ideological zealotry required to go from invoking delusion over robo minibuses only to immediately invoke using a technology that was made obsolete 90s years ago.
The problem with the skyway is that it requires a huge amount of resources. It's fixed costs are sky high and it's more expensive to operate than the new BRT routes that are 3 times longer and carry 5 tiimes as many people. The Skway is a resource hog that's completely unsustainable.
Today here are ZERO minibuses on the market that are designed to also operate on the Skyway. JTA's Skyway equipment is at the end of it's life, constantly failing nearly every day. The only thing keeping those decrepit cars running is some duct tape and really talented mechanics.
The only thing JTA should be lobbying for at this time is for explicit permission to mothball the Skyway. That is if there really is an issue with those Federal grants. That's not entirely clear; it's a claim JTA has been reluctant to publically back with evidence.
TPO's data exachange plan is fantastic. IIRC they're already providing / selling realtime traffic data to 3rd parties like Waze using blue tooth dectors. Having data about pedestrian movements, parking spots, autos, etc on the corridor would be a great stepping off point into more sophisticated planning.
So:
a) Mothball the Skyway
b) Build the Bay Street data exchange with the smart meters, smart traffic lights, smart lighting, etc, etc.
It's a great test bed for some cool technologies.