SAN ANTONIO | City and Metro Transportation Thread

[sirkingwilliam]

Originally Posted by Daren

FSD is going to make "most" public mass transit systems obsolete. The majority of that federal money (our money) will be wasted.

No.

[JACKinBeantown]

Originally Posted by Daren

FSD is going to make "most" public mass transit systems obsolete. The majority of that federal money (our money) will be wasted.

Please cite the sources of data upon which you are basing your hypothesis.

[Spoiler]

Originally Posted by Daren

FSD is going to make "most" public mass transit systems obsolete. The majority of that federal money (our money) will be wasted.

D'oh, that gosh darn wasted money on federally financed transit systems that aren't interstate highways

[Rynetwo]

I wanted to share some thoughts on the nature of our online discussions. While brief comments like “No” or playful remarks can add a light-hearted touch, they may not always contribute substantially to the conversation. It’s important for us to strive for engagement that is both informative and thought-provoking.

The article provides a comprehensive overview, highlighting how these changes could influence our daily lives, work, and interactions with autonomous vehicles. It’s a thought-provoking read that sparks conversations on the future landscape of our society.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885781/

Yes, AI, the other rapidly developing technology, helped me write this post.

[texboy]

I'm sorry, enlighten me here... what does "FSD" stand for?

[Rynetwo]

Originally Posted by texboy

I'm sorry, enlighten me here... what does "FSD" stand for?

Full Self Driving, it is just one term for autonomous.

[JACKinBeantown]

Originally Posted by Rynetwo

I wanted to share some thoughts on the nature of our online discussions. While brief comments like “No” or playful remarks can add a light-hearted touch, they may not always contribute substantially to the conversation. It’s important for us to strive for engagement that is both informative and thought-provoking.

The article provides a comprehensive overview, highlighting how these changes could influence our daily lives, work, and interactions with autonomous vehicles. It’s a thought-provoking read that sparks conversations on the future landscape of our society.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885781/

Yes, AI, the other rapidly developing technology, helped me write this post.

(like button)

[jaga185]

Bridging the Gap: San Antonio Secures $2.96M to Reconnect Downtown and East Side

Planning to address the structural barrier between downtown and the East Side is about to commence.

After receiving a $2.96 million grant from the Department of Transportation to study ways to deemphasize the Interstate 37 barrier between the two areas, the city of San Antonio is set to provide $740,000 in matching funds to kick off the effort. After applying for the funds last year, the federal government awarded a Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods grant in March of this year.

In a presentation to City Council's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in September 2023, Assistant City Manager Lori Houston said the goal is to reconnect downtown and the East Side by "minimizing or retrofitting that barrier ... and we would do that through the community planning process, that strategic plan and the development of a conceptual plan."

The city is paying its share through the Hotel Occupancy Tax Redemption Fund. City Council is expected to approve granting the funds this week. Officials will then form an oversight committee that will manage the planning phase, a series of public workshops, stakeholder meetings and other outreach events. The committee will be comprised of leaders from the city, Hemisfair, TxDOT, neighborhood associations and community organizations.

The city will also seek to hire a consultant to assist with the process, which is expected to take about one year. The city would then apply for a second grant to fund construction on whatever solution the committee reaches.
City officials were unavailable for comment before publication time.

[jkill34]

Originally Posted by jaga185

Bridging the Gap: San Antonio Secures $2.96M to Reconnect Downtown and East Side

I mean $2.69M just to plan it out seems like some inflation numbers. It better be a deck park or something like that.

[aggie2008]

VIA just announced they are adding Tap and Go payments to busses! Super excited to not have to worry about change or anything with the bus. I have the app and tickets there but this will be nice when trying to convince people to hop on a bus when we’re out and about!

[Keep-SA-Lame]

Originally Posted by aggie2008

VIA just announced they are adding Tap and Go payments to busses! Super excited to not have to worry about change or anything with the bus. I have the app and tickets there but this will be nice when trying to convince people to hop on a bus when we’re out and about!

Tap and go for transit blew my mind the first time I used it. Even in a city you live in, having to mess with a transit card or change is annoying, and as a visitor it's especially irritating. The only other cities I've used it in are London, Philly and NYC, so this feels like we're maybe slightly ahead of the curve here? I thought it would be a minimum of 250 years before VIA adopted it but what a great surprise!

[SAonFire]

Hello, long time user (rarely post). I normally shy away from posting questions, generally as a result of all the negative comments that are counterproductive to general discussion. Anyway, here it goes. This is a subject that has been argued over and over again but why can't SA and the overall metro take steps towards dedicated mass transit? I've been to Asia, Europe, South America and beautiful cities here in the US that utilize mass transit (subway, metro rail, bus) to get folks around pretty efficiently. I completely understand the finance hurdles but seems to me that traffic is only getting worse and issues such as rampant dwi and quality of life suffer as a result of over-dependence on individual automobiles. Bus rapid transit will still require shared usage of roadways and likely won't yield any true widespread benefits as they will still be at the mercy of traffic (as much as they say it won't). I'm sure light-rail or anything remotely close to that will ever happen in SA and coupled with the poor approach to airport design and expansion will always serve as a barrier to real growth. Anyway, pick apart my opinions as you please. I suppose I just would like to see a more streamlined approach to transportation in San Antonio. Thanks and have a great day!

[JACKinBeantown]

Originally Posted by SAonFire

Hello, long time user (rarely post). I normally shy away from posting questions, generally as a result of all the negative comments that are counterproductive to general discussion. Anyway, here it goes. This is a subject that has been argued over and over again but why can't SA and the overall metro take steps towards dedicated mass transit? I've been to Asia, Europe, South America and beautiful cities here in the US that utilize mass transit (subway, metro rail, bus) to get folks around pretty efficiently. I completely understand the finance hurdles but seems to me that traffic is only getting worse and issues such as rampant dwi and quality of life suffer as a result of over-dependence on individual automobiles. Bus rapid transit will still require shared usage of roadways and likely won't yield any true widespread benefits as they will still be at the mercy of traffic (as much as they say it won't). I'm sure light-rail or anything remotely close to that will ever happen in SA and coupled with the poor approach to airport design and expansion will always serve as a barrier to real growth. Anyway, pick apart my opinions as you please. I suppose I just would like to see a more streamlined approach to transportation in San Antonio. Thanks and have a great day!

How dare you ask a question to try to gain knowledge about something!

In short, it boils down to ingrained car culture, lack of wanting to pass a minor tax to fund something useful like mass transit, lack of knowledge on the part of citizens who have never experienced a good mass transit system (and that's not necessarily their fault), poor planning on the part of those whose job it is to plan such things, oil companies lobbying against mass transit, "us against them" attitudes by some, and a whole bunch of other issues.

Each of those things involves a much lengthier discussion, but that's my opinion in a hundred words or fewer.

[SpiritofSeguin]

Originally Posted by SAonFire

Hello, long time user (rarely post). I normally shy away from posting questions, generally as a result of all the negative comments that are counterproductive to general discussion. Anyway, here it goes. This is a subject that has been argued over and over again but why can't SA and the overall metro take steps towards dedicated mass transit? I've been to Asia, Europe, South America and beautiful cities here in the US that utilize mass transit (subway, metro rail, bus) to get folks around pretty efficiently. I completely understand the finance hurdles but seems to me that traffic is only getting worse and issues such as rampant dwi and quality of life suffer as a result of over-dependence on individual automobiles. Bus rapid transit will still require shared usage of roadways and likely won't yield any true widespread benefits as they will still be at the mercy of traffic (as much as they say it won't). I'm sure light-rail or anything remotely close to that will ever happen in SA and coupled with the poor approach to airport design and expansion will always serve as a barrier to real growth. Anyway, pick apart my opinions as you please. I suppose I just would like to see a more streamlined approach to transportation in San Antonio. Thanks and have a great day!

People won’t give up their cars and they also are hesitant to vote for it. If you read the Instagram or social media comments when the news shares updates on the proposed VIA DART-style lines on San Pedro from airport to downtown, there’s a decent amount of those who say it’s a taxpayer waste of money or something along those lines. Since I doubt the Nov 5th ballot initiatives to raise the mayor/council/city manager salaries will be approved (and any city that wants to be taken seriously needs competitive and growing salaries for the management to attract talent because why work in sleepy San Antonio for 200k as an example when I can work for 400k in the hustling bustling Dallas or Houston?) I have my doubts…

In the immediate term the Primo accordion bus lines should be expanded to all four major roads to the compass, so I guess that’s Buena Vista for the West Side, Flores for the South Side, Houston for the East and once again San Pedro or Blanco for the North Side and hopefully we can work towards getting ground broken on these new DART-style lines soon…but I feel like the State of Texas in some way has yet to interfere like how they did Broadway bike lanes. They seem to want to sue and get involved in every matter these days.

[aggie2008]

Originally Posted by SAonFire

Hello, long time user (rarely post). I normally shy away from posting questions, generally as a result of all the negative comments that are counterproductive to general discussion. Anyway, here it goes. This is a subject that has been argued over and over again but why can't SA and the overall metro take steps towards dedicated mass transit? I've been to Asia, Europe, South America and beautiful cities here in the US that utilize mass transit (subway, metro rail, bus) to get folks around pretty efficiently. I completely understand the finance hurdles but seems to me that traffic is only getting worse and issues such as rampant dwi and quality of life suffer as a result of over-dependence on individual automobiles. Bus rapid transit will still require shared usage of roadways and likely won't yield any true widespread benefits as they will still be at the mercy of traffic (as much as they say it won't). I'm sure light-rail or anything remotely close to that will ever happen in SA and coupled with the poor approach to airport design and expansion will always serve as a barrier to real growth. Anyway, pick apart my opinions as you please. I suppose I just would like to see a more streamlined approach to transportation in San Antonio. Thanks and have a great day!

A couple of major problems for San Antonio and transit...
1. Texas doesn't provide money at a state level, in order to get federal money you have to have a local match
2. VIA was the first transit agency in Texas to take advantage of the ability to use sales tax to fund it, unfortunately they went for a .5% sales tax where most cities used the full 1% they were allowed to

To get around number 1 San Antonio is using a mix of sales tax for the N/S line and Bexar County funds for E/W. After that funding mechanisms will be largely tapped out unless we use property tax like Austin did.

For number two, VIA has slowly gotten more money from the Advanced Transportation District 1/8 cent and soon the 1/8 cent that was used for workforce training is being transitioned over. Still not the full cent most cities have but better. The additonal funding will fund increased frequency or what VIA is dubbing "Better Bus".

As far as dedicated lanes I'm actually pretty happy with the Advanced Rapid Transit (ART) N/S project as it includes a lot of center running transit lanes that have no other uses allowed and some "Business Priority Lanes" which is running at the edges and right hand turns are allowed from them. Parts of San Pedro are actually pretty narrow and it would be very hard, maybe impossible to have all uses in those sections. I'm hoping an eventual Fred ART line is all Center Running as it actually has space.

You can see a map of the different lane types

[aggie2008]

Separate from the funding I'm very curious how the Transit Oriented Development Task Force is going. To make this thing successful you have to actually build next to it but the NIMBYs seem like they are watering down the new zoning categories too much. You can see the proposed zoning changes here:
https://publicinput.com/Customer/Fil...ilB4cXOcbbQK-Q

My main concern is that they are limiting the rezoning area to too small an area (my opinion is it should be .5 miles/~10 minute walk from each station) and they created this bogus "transit transitional" district that seems super lame. 5 units per lot, 35' max height which is 2.5 stories. There is definitely a place for that sort of zoning but I'm worried it will be applied to the whole corridor. Remains to be seen though.

[bosshaa5]

Originally Posted by aggie2008

Separate from the funding I'm very curious how the Transit Oriented Development Task Force is going. To make this thing successful you have to actually build next to it but the NIMBYs seem like they are watering down the new zoning categories too much. You can see the proposed zoning changes here:
https://publicinput.com/Customer/Fil...ilB4cXOcbbQK-Q

My main concern is that they are limiting the rezoning area to too small an area (my opinion is it should be .5 miles/~10 minute walk from each station) and they created this bogus "transit transitional" district that seems super lame. 5 units per lot, 35' max height which is 2.5 stories. There is definitely a place for that sort of zoning but I'm worried it will be applied to the whole corridor. Remains to be seen though.

I have been following the TOD stuff closely. It’s getting diluted by a strange coalition of opposition. You have the affluent neighborhoods north of downtown that come to every task force meeting and whine about how this will increase traffic, and harm property values…typical NINBY stuff. Then you have the Esperanza Center and folks on the west side who are mounting opposition for the proposed Silver Line sounding the alarm about gentrification.

That being said you have organizations like Strong Towns SA, ActivateSA, and SART (San Antonians for Rail Transit) who are leading the charge for TOD. It’s on track for adoption by the end of the year, I think we will see a final draft soon.

[SAonFire]

Thank you all so very much for the insightful responses! I sincerely appreciate them all.

I guess at the heart of it all, I want to see growth and prosperity throughout our community, etc. I just think that alternative means of mass transit stands as a critical component to such a reality.

While in Tokyo recently, I ventured into many parts of the city and only got into a taxi once. The last time I was there, I never saw the inside of a car! ...don't get me started on the airport! 😍😀

Thanks again!

[Spoiler]

There's a big ol' article about this very subject in the San Antonio Report today.

https://sanantonioreport.org/what-is...e-san-antonio/