J Magazine Winter 2019

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“I had a number of people who were whispering
in my ear, when are you going to tear that thing down?
You had folks who were commenting about tearing
down the Skyway who have never ridden it.”
– NAT FORD –
The future is almost here
One of the reasons Ford sees things differently from you and me is
his way of looking at old problems in new way. His team doesn’t just
include transit specialists.
“A lot of folks we brought in are private-sector folks. Our head of
the U2C program is from Amazon. His No. 2 is from Amazon, where
they were steeped in robotics and artificial intelligence and things of
that nature. We are attracting talent to the JTA that is not ‘transportation’
or ‘transit’ talent, but people who are innovative and creative,
and we are excited about the energy
inside this organization.”
Now that JTA has updated
most of the existing transportation
system, Ford wants to figure
out how to create a more effective
system using new technology to
serve a revitalized Downtown and
surrounding neighborhoods.
Perhaps testing the limits of his
New York cockiness, Ford began
to eye our most visible symbol of
transportation failure: the Skyway,
the 30-year-old, 2.5-mile monorail
people mover that, despite being
free, moves relatively few people.
“I had a number of people who
were whispering in my ear, when
are you going to tear that thing
down, you gotta tear that thing
down,” he said. “You had folks who
were commenting about tearing
down the Skyway who have never
ridden it. They didn’t realize that
you have escalators, elevators,
you’ve got a roof system, you’ve
An Ultimate Urban Circulator autonomous vehicle that the JTA is considering is trailered to a display in Hemming Park.
got a lighting system, you’ve got a
lot of infrastructure. And over in
Brooklyn, you have a very large
control center that has been built there and a maintenance facility.”
So Ford put together a diverse advisory group that studied the Skyway
and found that the original 12-mile planned route for the Skyway
was remarkably similar to the current Downtown revitalization plans.
And if those plans work, with many more people living in and visiting
Downtown, the city will need those other roughly 10 miles of transit.
It’s clearly impractical to expand the Skyway. “Cost prohibitive,
takes forever, casts shadows, all of those different issues. But you’ve
got the core, you’ve got a skeleton, 2 1/2 miles that gives you time savings
above the fray of automobiles. Why not leverage that?”
It turned out that the original Skyway proposal was a roadway, for
rubber-tire vehicles.
“At the same time, we started hearing about this technology
around autonomous (driverless) vehicles,” Ford said, “and that’s
when the light bulb went off.”
What emerged was the current plan to convert the existing Skyway
from monorail into roadways and, where they end, build ramps to go
down to ground level to continue the roadway. “We do these autonomous
vehicles, take them at grade, and we could get from 2 1/2 miles
to 10 miles a whole lot faster than an aerial structure at a lot less cost.”
He figures that, by the time JTA secures the funding for the expansion,
“the AV technology should be mature enough in another five to
seven years, it should be more than mature enough that we can operate
it in mixed traffic or dedicated lanes.”
At that point, the old Skyway will become the Ultimate Urban Connector,
or U2C, with at least 22 stops in Downtown and surrounding
neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, JTA is evaluating different AVs at its test track on East
WINTER 2019 | J MAGAZINE 27