Without a fully grade separated solution, ain't no robo-buses coming anytime soon. The problem isn't the ROW east of the elbow. It never was. Whether it is buses, low floor lrvs, high floor lrv, mini metro, automated light metro, or Vegas loop style. The problem is downtown, both providing something better than exists currently for potential users and not making other things worse for non users. There are only two ways to do that, elevated, or a tunnel, or a combination of the two.
You only address the problem, by focusing on the problem. The problem is that between 9th and 7th on 2nd street specifically, the normally bad geology of the downtown/beltline glacial floodplain is horrendously worse. You can throw money at the problem, or avoid it. Those are the two options. You can avoid it by going much further west (6ths is viable), or going much further east, both which create spillover problems, or by going up which is the equivalent of an aesthetic war crime to many people.