It was built to get northsiders to ride the bus, but for many, it’s become a monument to inefficient government spending. VIA Transit’s under-used park & ride structure along Highway 281 North.<\/p>\n
The News 4 I-Team Waste Watch reveals plans VIA\u2019s new CEO has to better utilize the project.<\/p>\n
VIA’s park & ride at Stone Oak Parkway has 400 parking spaces but we’ve never counted more than 65 vehicles parked there and that was just this week.<\/p>\n
With low demand for bus rides, the transit agency has decided to make it a hub for its ride share service, VIA Link.<\/p>\n
Ever since the park & ride opened in 2018, passersby have complained about how often it appears to be almost empty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw buses sitting here that were empty, I couldn’t see any cars in the garage,” said northside driver Nolan Sagebiel.<\/p>\n
Our News 4 I-Team investigation uncovered that on top of the $25 million price tag to build the garage, the ramp connecting directly to Highway 281 cost an additional $7 million taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like my tax money had been flushed, and now we’re paying for this boondoggle, and we’re paying for the maintenance of this building for the next 30 or 40 years,” Sagebiel said.<\/p>\n
At last week’s State of Transit event we talked to Jon Gary Herrera, who became VIA\u2019s President and CEO late last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we going to see that park & ride used more?\u201d reporter Jaie Avila asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, that’s what we included in the Better Bus Plan, is for more activity to happen in and around that parking garage there at Stone Oak,” Herrera said.<\/p>\n
Herrera says he wants to increase the number of bus routes, right now there are only two.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, what we’re going to do with Stone Oak, is it’s going to become a future hub of our VIA Link service, that’s going to be serving that area of town,” Herrera added.<\/p>\n
VIA Link is a ride share service where you can request a ride in a car through an app on your phone. It\u2019s like Uber but a lot cheaper at $2.75<\/p>\n
The catch is the service is only operating in five zones around San Antonio right now. VIA hopes to activate a Stone Oak zone in 2027.<\/p>\n
The transit agency says VIA Link ridership has increased by 33 percent so far this year.<\/p>\n
Beginning January 2026, VIA will start receiving another $54 million a year from your sales taxes, which was approved by voters in 2020.<\/p>\n
The agency hopes ride share is the key to attracting passengers who don’t want to take the bus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was built to get northsiders to ride the bus, but for many, it’s become a monument to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,12893,12889,12890,7202,7203,12891,12894,358,12892,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,12888,12895],"class_list":{"0":"post-12176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bus-routes","10":"tag-park-ride","11":"tag-ride-share","12":"tag-san-antonio","13":"tag-sanantonio","14":"tag-stone-oak","15":"tag-taxpayers","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-transit-agency","18":"tag-tx","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-via","26":"tag-via-link"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114741329530339972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}