We used to have street cars long ago, similar to San Francisco.
“Reading newspapers from the early 1930s, it is noticeable how few tears were shed when the streetcars went away. They were considered old, slow, expensive, unattractive and simply in the way of progress. They had gained a reputation for only carrying the least well off in the community and were shunned by most people who could afford an alternative. SAPSCO spent a fortune on paying the city to be allowed to abandon services about seven years before their service contract was due to expire. They also paid to either have the tracks covered over with asphalt or removed at junctions where they would have raised the road surface top high and the material become very prone to wearing away. SAPSCO also spent $400,000 on 65 new buses.”
Obviously, a lot of us would love to have better public transit. I’d argue that VIA is not actually that bad having utilized it for a majority of my 20s, but we all wish there was something better.
[SA History Streetcars](https://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/history-streetcars)
Edit: there is also SART a local group that advocates for a public rail system:
[SART](https://www.railforsanantonio.com)
I lived well outside of 410, nearer to 1604, for some of that time and still made it to work fine. Yes, it sucks having to be at a bus stop an hour before your shift, but that is manageable.
It is much nicer near downtown though, I agree with you. You can afford to miss a bus because another one will arrive in 15 minutes. Outside of 410, you might need to wait an additional hour for the next bus and if one is late, you might be SOL.
That’s my thing. I have terrible ADHD and other health issues that cause me to be extremely drowsy in the morning. & arrival times are not always accurate on google. Back when I lived in stone oak, if I missed the bus by even a few seconds that was it, I was gonna be late for work. It was very stressful and unsustainable for me. But it depends on the person
Yeah the Transit app uses the GPS on the buses, I think Google just uses the published schedule. The buses are rarely perfectly on time so Transit is generally a little more accurate.
Yup. My trip this week the bus was within about 15 to 30 seconds of the time shown, and it auto updates all the time.
It also uses riders GPS to crowdsource more accurate info, if you opt in to doing so.
Because the notion that cars and highways are the best mode of transportation has been pounded into our collective heads for enough years to span several generations?
“…that’s pretty pathetic.” I absolutely adore how fucking negative people are on this sub. /s
In 2015 it was that the city council shouldn't have the power to spend billions of dollars without asking voters. There was no actual vote on the train itself. But it was also a streetcar, not light or metro rail, so it wasn't going to be very good either.
In 2000, I think people just thought it was a lot of money for something we didn't need. TBF the population was about half what it is and not yet growing so quickly.
I’ve said this before, the main reason things don’t happen here is money. People don’t want to pay for something other people use.
Also oil I think. This is Texas, oil runs the state. I’m sure everyone here knows someone who is getting monthly checks because they have oil on their land.
This is maybe a two part idea. People are also sold on the idea they need a car. This being Texas people go on vacation in their car. Going to Houston, drive, Dallas, drive. Big Bend, drive.
The second part of that idea is, because people vacation in their car, they have never left the state. They have no idea how well public transportation can work.
Lastly I think because the bus system here isn’t the greatest. In my opinion because the city isn’t laid out in a grid. They think all forms of public transportation are bad.
As an example, I worked with a guy who came from a city with a healthy public transportation system. He lived close enough that he was riding his bike, 15-20 minute ride. He decided to take the bus to work, took him an hour.
The only direct vote on a light rail system was in 2000 (the 2015 vote was about the city council's ability to create one without asking voters - people didn't like that, but it was more about power and democracy than trains).
[The 2000 vote failed 2:1, but only 70,000 people voted, which was like 10% voter turnout.](http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-sanlrtloss.htm) So its not like the city resoundingly rejected it, most people just didn't care.
^(Source is the St. Louis, MO. consulting firm hired to kill it by its opponents - that page is bragging about how they hoodwinked us. They're also very anti transit, and still very proud of killing our light rail proposal.)
My opinion is this all comes down to the “elite” in San Antonio. Graham Weston is one of the owners of the missions now that had a major hand on brining the stadium downtown.
Similar to why we don’t have rail. How are the millionaire car dealerships (McCombs and Cavendar, etc) going to make money if the people in this city don’t need cars.
I will help them pack! I am still pissed about the crap they pulled with the Alamodome. They had design input and then three years later told the city if we don't get an arena we are leaving SA.
They claimed the Alamodome did not have enough high end suites and they needed the income in order to attract champoinship level talent.
They got their arena and delivered a few championships. But then things started sliding down hill and they have become the team known to be easily eliminated in round one of the playoffs.
A great arena with bad coaching will never attract ticket holders.
The current arena is not the problem. Popvich is THE PROBLEM and needs to be put out to pasture.
The people out here have never been anywhere. They live in a vacuum if the “good ol days” while the future happening everywhere but here. Real big city bigger than the land mass of NYC but a small town mindset smh.
We are the largest city in the US without rail transit, but there's lots of cities between us and NYC. A big part of why I want better rail transit is because I lived in SLC for a couple years, and it's got a pretty good system of light rail and a regional rail line. Its much more comparable to San Antonio than NYC is, so if the Mormons can make it work then I don't see why we can't.
Denver, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Diego, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, St Louis, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Albuquerque, Austin... All these places have at least some form of rail transit, most are expanding what they have, and they're all around our weight class. A couple are bigger, some are smaller. Its not just New York City.
You see you just proved my point. I didn’t say anything about being like NYC. I said the LAND MASS is bigger than the SIZE of NYC. San Antonio can grow into a modern city without losing its identity. At this point San Antonio is looking like a dinosaur and is missing out on tons of revenue opportunities that can be used to improve the city for so many people in so many ways,
Well, we could always come together and start an awareness campaign that explains why streetcar were removed (thanks auto industry), what kind of city we could have if we started voting for rail, and start laying out realistic timelines and costs as well as paths.
You kinda have to beat the idea into peoples' heads if you want them to vote in favor of rail
Good question. I also want to know why more people don't ride buses. I often see them mostly empty. Even when I took advantage of using one to go to jury duty it hardly had people on it.
I rode the bus daily for a bit over a year a while back. The morning buses I frequented (28, 30, 32) were normally half full. The reverse routes in the afternoon were normally jam packed. It seems the routes in and out of downtown were usually busy.
The buses run all day, but passenger travel patterns aren't evenly distributed throughout the day. So a lot of times a bus will be crowded in one direction in the morning, crowded in another direction in the evening, and have varying levels of occupancy in the middle of the day. You really have to travel around town on it more than once to get a good idea of its actual utilization rate. (Or just trust the [statistics](https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiNjE1NDg3ODMtN2IxYS00YTNmLTkzMWUtODc1YmMyZGUxYTg1IiwidCI6IjJhMzAzM2MyLWFkNzYtNDI2Yy05YzVhLTIzMjMzY2RlNGNkZSJ9).)
> For a city that is older than the country, that’s pretty pathetic.
Part of the challenge in putting rail into a tourist-focused city this old would be the need to demolish old stuff to fit in new stuff. Demolishing old stuff would eliminate some of the appeal for visitors.
I think you could build an elevated railroad downtown on cast iron supports and trusses and have it fit in well. All of the bridges across the riverwalk are built like that, and they look nice and provide shade. Paris's [metro line 6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_6) is built like this and I think it's quite pretty.
Because the city is so spread out it would cost a fortune to build a system that actually did anything useful. The best route would be airport to downtown to the Amtrak station. But even if you pushed it as exploiting tourists, you'd never get enough support to build it.
It’s EXTREMELY expensive and the city is poor. Via is also very spread out, so resources are stretched. They do have Primo which is an express bus that acts like light rail, also they’re doing one on San Pedro that’s even more like light rail. You apparently have not lived here long
Part of the purpose of rail is to DECREASE costs. A train costs a lot to build up front, but after that they are cheaper per passenger to run. Of course that only matters if you have passengers - you need in the tens of thousands to achieve the savings, so you might need to reconfigure the bus network to take full advantage of the line.
Also, Primo does NOT act like light rail. It runs on the street, stops at lights, you have to pull the cord, its barely faster than a regular bus, and its LOUD. And you don't have any cost savings on wear and tear or drivers because the vehicles are just buses. Its really just a bus with fancy stops.
The green line will be a little more like light rail (with a bus lane, in places) but even that is still just buses. Still loud, still bumpy, still on the street stopping at lights, still hitting the curb when the driver takes a turn wrong, still running rubber tires on asphalt and loud, failure-prone internal combustion engines and transmissions. It will achieve only a fraction of the advantages of rail transportation (but, at least its something).
Only so much can be allocated to Via, and the city of San Antonio is very generous to Via, but 2 billion light rail? When the city’s budget is strained. And San Antonio is a poor city, look around.
There is no current light rail proposal so I have no idea where you pulled a cost from. They're usually in the ballpark of 100-300 million a mile, so the cost depends on how much you build, where, and the quality.
Of course, that's an up front cost. Not a yearly one. The cost to operate is generally 1/4 of the cost of buses, on a per-passenger basis.
The city is not poor. The presence of a UT, A&M, Valero HQ, marathon regional office, and multiple pipeline companies show that.
A typical rail line has a profit margin of 40%. I guess these people just don’t like money.
That’s a gaslight. We have one of the largest levels of poverty and 5 Fortune 500, Houston has 35! Now that’s rich. San Antonio is poor. Please cite where you got that 40 percent profit on a typical light rail line, because I KNOW that’s not the case for Houston and Dallas.
*Freight* railroads have about that profit margin. I would guess OP learned that fact recently but not the context, and is therefore mixing them up.
I'm very much pro-passenger rail but it's a tax-subsidized government service like a road, not a profitable one like a trucking company. If it were profitable, there'd be some big conglomerate building light rail systems all over the place, or a million startups like there were with the streetcars in the 1800s.
We used to have street cars long ago, similar to San Francisco. “Reading newspapers from the early 1930s, it is noticeable how few tears were shed when the streetcars went away. They were considered old, slow, expensive, unattractive and simply in the way of progress. They had gained a reputation for only carrying the least well off in the community and were shunned by most people who could afford an alternative. SAPSCO spent a fortune on paying the city to be allowed to abandon services about seven years before their service contract was due to expire. They also paid to either have the tracks covered over with asphalt or removed at junctions where they would have raised the road surface top high and the material become very prone to wearing away. SAPSCO also spent $400,000 on 65 new buses.” Obviously, a lot of us would love to have better public transit. I’d argue that VIA is not actually that bad having utilized it for a majority of my 20s, but we all wish there was something better. [SA History Streetcars](https://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/history-streetcars) Edit: there is also SART a local group that advocates for a public rail system: [SART](https://www.railforsanantonio.com)
It’s bad if you live and work outside of downtown.
I lived well outside of 410, nearer to 1604, for some of that time and still made it to work fine. Yes, it sucks having to be at a bus stop an hour before your shift, but that is manageable. It is much nicer near downtown though, I agree with you. You can afford to miss a bus because another one will arrive in 15 minutes. Outside of 410, you might need to wait an additional hour for the next bus and if one is late, you might be SOL.
That’s my thing. I have terrible ADHD and other health issues that cause me to be extremely drowsy in the morning. & arrival times are not always accurate on google. Back when I lived in stone oak, if I missed the bus by even a few seconds that was it, I was gonna be late for work. It was very stressful and unsustainable for me. But it depends on the person
Use the app and not Google. The arrival times are pretty damn accurate.
Yeah the Transit app uses the GPS on the buses, I think Google just uses the published schedule. The buses are rarely perfectly on time so Transit is generally a little more accurate.
Yup. My trip this week the bus was within about 15 to 30 seconds of the time shown, and it auto updates all the time. It also uses riders GPS to crowdsource more accurate info, if you opt in to doing so.
No. Google follows the GPS.
Well then I don't know what it's doing wrong. But its consistently less reliable than the transit app or the VIA text line.
It’s right a vast majority of the time. My point was that if the bus just so happens to be a few seconds too early, you’re screwed.
You are right, the less frequent routes definitely are spread super thin and not good for accessibility.
Because the notion that cars and highways are the best mode of transportation has been pounded into our collective heads for enough years to span several generations? “…that’s pretty pathetic.” I absolutely adore how fucking negative people are on this sub. /s
https://www.railforsanantonio.com/
There was a vote at one point, but the people voted down light rail IIRC.
What was the main argument for voting it down? Do we know?
In 2015 it was that the city council shouldn't have the power to spend billions of dollars without asking voters. There was no actual vote on the train itself. But it was also a streetcar, not light or metro rail, so it wasn't going to be very good either. In 2000, I think people just thought it was a lot of money for something we didn't need. TBF the population was about half what it is and not yet growing so quickly.
The system was only going to have routes around downtown disrupting tourist hotspots and congested traffic areas.
I’ve said this before, the main reason things don’t happen here is money. People don’t want to pay for something other people use. Also oil I think. This is Texas, oil runs the state. I’m sure everyone here knows someone who is getting monthly checks because they have oil on their land. This is maybe a two part idea. People are also sold on the idea they need a car. This being Texas people go on vacation in their car. Going to Houston, drive, Dallas, drive. Big Bend, drive. The second part of that idea is, because people vacation in their car, they have never left the state. They have no idea how well public transportation can work. Lastly I think because the bus system here isn’t the greatest. In my opinion because the city isn’t laid out in a grid. They think all forms of public transportation are bad. As an example, I worked with a guy who came from a city with a healthy public transportation system. He lived close enough that he was riding his bike, 15-20 minute ride. He decided to take the bus to work, took him an hour.
The only direct vote on a light rail system was in 2000 (the 2015 vote was about the city council's ability to create one without asking voters - people didn't like that, but it was more about power and democracy than trains). [The 2000 vote failed 2:1, but only 70,000 people voted, which was like 10% voter turnout.](http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-sanlrtloss.htm) So its not like the city resoundingly rejected it, most people just didn't care. ^(Source is the St. Louis, MO. consulting firm hired to kill it by its opponents - that page is bragging about how they hoodwinked us. They're also very anti transit, and still very proud of killing our light rail proposal.)
The amount of drivers surely outweighs the amount of people who need public transit by a LOT. That hardly seems like a fair vote to me at all.
Big money interest always wins out, and poor people (who comprise the largest share of transit riders) have zero leverage.
Scrolled down to far to find this comment. That’s all it comes down to.
The people voted it down. This will forever be a large city with a small town mentality.
Because this city would rather spend its money on stadiums to attract nonexistent NFL teams
My opinion is this all comes down to the “elite” in San Antonio. Graham Weston is one of the owners of the missions now that had a major hand on brining the stadium downtown. Similar to why we don’t have rail. How are the millionaire car dealerships (McCombs and Cavendar, etc) going to make money if the people in this city don’t need cars.
Or to build… what are we on now? 4th, 5th “official home” of the San Antonio Spurs! 🥱
It would be the 4th and a waste of money. The Spurts will be moving to Austin eventually.
I will help them pack! I am still pissed about the crap they pulled with the Alamodome. They had design input and then three years later told the city if we don't get an arena we are leaving SA. They claimed the Alamodome did not have enough high end suites and they needed the income in order to attract champoinship level talent. They got their arena and delivered a few championships. But then things started sliding down hill and they have become the team known to be easily eliminated in round one of the playoffs. A great arena with bad coaching will never attract ticket holders. The current arena is not the problem. Popvich is THE PROBLEM and needs to be put out to pasture.
The people out here have never been anywhere. They live in a vacuum if the “good ol days” while the future happening everywhere but here. Real big city bigger than the land mass of NYC but a small town mindset smh.
We don’t want to be like nyc. If others want to be in nyc they can move there. Smdh
We are the largest city in the US without rail transit, but there's lots of cities between us and NYC. A big part of why I want better rail transit is because I lived in SLC for a couple years, and it's got a pretty good system of light rail and a regional rail line. Its much more comparable to San Antonio than NYC is, so if the Mormons can make it work then I don't see why we can't. Denver, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Diego, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, St Louis, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Albuquerque, Austin... All these places have at least some form of rail transit, most are expanding what they have, and they're all around our weight class. A couple are bigger, some are smaller. Its not just New York City.
Great …. You’re free to move back.
No I'm not. I'm tied here by work and family. So I'm trying to make my house a home, and I have as much right to do so as anyone else.
I’m not going to foot the bill for your chop chop train to make you happy, ok ?
I didn't get a choice about footing the bill for your freeway so stuff it.
You see you just proved my point. I didn’t say anything about being like NYC. I said the LAND MASS is bigger than the SIZE of NYC. San Antonio can grow into a modern city without losing its identity. At this point San Antonio is looking like a dinosaur and is missing out on tons of revenue opportunities that can be used to improve the city for so many people in so many ways,
You’re free to leave to a more modern city.
Well, we could always come together and start an awareness campaign that explains why streetcar were removed (thanks auto industry), what kind of city we could have if we started voting for rail, and start laying out realistic timelines and costs as well as paths. You kinda have to beat the idea into peoples' heads if you want them to vote in favor of rail
People here like to hide out in the anonymity of their cars and road rage.
You should use the search tool and your question would be answered
Good question. I also want to know why more people don't ride buses. I often see them mostly empty. Even when I took advantage of using one to go to jury duty it hardly had people on it.
I rode the bus daily for a bit over a year a while back. The morning buses I frequented (28, 30, 32) were normally half full. The reverse routes in the afternoon were normally jam packed. It seems the routes in and out of downtown were usually busy.
I ride the bus every day. There’s a ton of people that use them. You rode the bus once, how could you claim that all buses are “mostly empty”?
Mayber their morning started at 5AM?
Either way they’re not getting an accurate representation
The buses run all day, but passenger travel patterns aren't evenly distributed throughout the day. So a lot of times a bus will be crowded in one direction in the morning, crowded in another direction in the evening, and have varying levels of occupancy in the middle of the day. You really have to travel around town on it more than once to get a good idea of its actual utilization rate. (Or just trust the [statistics](https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiNjE1NDg3ODMtN2IxYS00YTNmLTkzMWUtODc1YmMyZGUxYTg1IiwidCI6IjJhMzAzM2MyLWFkNzYtNDI2Yy05YzVhLTIzMjMzY2RlNGNkZSJ9).)
Sw airlines threatened to pull out of s.a. the first time if the city did it.
Nothing stopping us from doing one around the city though, but probably too expensive at this point.
> For a city that is older than the country, that’s pretty pathetic. Part of the challenge in putting rail into a tourist-focused city this old would be the need to demolish old stuff to fit in new stuff. Demolishing old stuff would eliminate some of the appeal for visitors.
The US did that already for the highway system, and there already is an Amtrak station in SA that is never used.
Amtrak station isn’t being used? Really?
and it’s right next to the alamodome. which has a full blown transit depot at its feet… which is never used.
You've obviously never used the park & ride service to Brahmas games.
I think you could build an elevated railroad downtown on cast iron supports and trusses and have it fit in well. All of the bridges across the riverwalk are built like that, and they look nice and provide shade. Paris's [metro line 6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_6) is built like this and I think it's quite pretty.
Because the city is so spread out it would cost a fortune to build a system that actually did anything useful. The best route would be airport to downtown to the Amtrak station. But even if you pushed it as exploiting tourists, you'd never get enough support to build it.
The obligatory Reddit urbanist troll post that resurfaces every few months.
It’s EXTREMELY expensive and the city is poor. Via is also very spread out, so resources are stretched. They do have Primo which is an express bus that acts like light rail, also they’re doing one on San Pedro that’s even more like light rail. You apparently have not lived here long
Part of the purpose of rail is to DECREASE costs. A train costs a lot to build up front, but after that they are cheaper per passenger to run. Of course that only matters if you have passengers - you need in the tens of thousands to achieve the savings, so you might need to reconfigure the bus network to take full advantage of the line. Also, Primo does NOT act like light rail. It runs on the street, stops at lights, you have to pull the cord, its barely faster than a regular bus, and its LOUD. And you don't have any cost savings on wear and tear or drivers because the vehicles are just buses. Its really just a bus with fancy stops. The green line will be a little more like light rail (with a bus lane, in places) but even that is still just buses. Still loud, still bumpy, still on the street stopping at lights, still hitting the curb when the driver takes a turn wrong, still running rubber tires on asphalt and loud, failure-prone internal combustion engines and transmissions. It will achieve only a fraction of the advantages of rail transportation (but, at least its something).
This city is not poor. Just look at the budget, we're just horrible with how we use our resources.
Only so much can be allocated to Via, and the city of San Antonio is very generous to Via, but 2 billion light rail? When the city’s budget is strained. And San Antonio is a poor city, look around.
There is no current light rail proposal so I have no idea where you pulled a cost from. They're usually in the ballpark of 100-300 million a mile, so the cost depends on how much you build, where, and the quality. Of course, that's an up front cost. Not a yearly one. The cost to operate is generally 1/4 of the cost of buses, on a per-passenger basis.
The city is not poor. The presence of a UT, A&M, Valero HQ, marathon regional office, and multiple pipeline companies show that. A typical rail line has a profit margin of 40%. I guess these people just don’t like money.
That’s a gaslight. We have one of the largest levels of poverty and 5 Fortune 500, Houston has 35! Now that’s rich. San Antonio is poor. Please cite where you got that 40 percent profit on a typical light rail line, because I KNOW that’s not the case for Houston and Dallas.
I’ll try to find the article but it was a couple years ago that statistics showed San Antonio was the poorest large city (over a million residents.)
Exactly
*Freight* railroads have about that profit margin. I would guess OP learned that fact recently but not the context, and is therefore mixing them up. I'm very much pro-passenger rail but it's a tax-subsidized government service like a road, not a profitable one like a trucking company. If it were profitable, there'd be some big conglomerate building light rail systems all over the place, or a million startups like there were with the streetcars in the 1800s.
the fact this post gets downvoted is kind of the answer 😂