I recently sent Mayor Ivy Taylor a letter to convey my personal dreams of San Antonio with her new tenure:
Dear, Mayor Ivy Taylor,
My name is Wilber Castro, and I reside in District 9 in the city of Hill Country Village. If circumstances were better, I would be writing only to congratulate you on your recent victory; you have big shoes to fill, even if in a temporary capacity. Unfortunately, the dissolution of the VIA Metropolitan Transit Modern Streetcar project has made me question the direction of your leadership. As someone who resides on a side of town where public transportation is obsolete, this project would have had a ripple effect on the local mindset when it comes to sustainable, environmentally friendly, and accessible public transportation.
The Northside receives a huge amount of government funding for infrastructure and connectivity. Just down the street from my home, I have seen the massive work being done on the 281/1604 Hwy. interchange and the expansion of Wurzbach Parkway. However, I believe that facilitating transportation in the urban core is equally important.
The VIA Streetcar proposal has many flaws, but it is my personal belief, as a 20-year-old Millennial living in San Antonio, that San Antonio’s urban core needs to have some cohesive sense of interconnectivity to spur economic growth and rebrand downtown as an economic hub in addition to a tourism destination. Although the VIA Streetcar project would not have had a major influence in my day-to-day life, I feel it is my civic duty to implore you to please reconsider your stance.
I believe that the governing bodies should care about having public input. But just as our founding fathers believed that public opinion and the whims of the masses are easily swayed, local governments should consider that putting the governing and taxing power to the public would be absolutely biased, politically motivated, and easy to influence. We cannot have the public – largely uneducated in regards to the streetcar project’s potential benefits to the city – find itself fueled by fervor, emotion, and fear of progress.
If you look at great cities in the U.S. and abroad, you will see that we are lagging far behind when it comes to accessible public transportation. We rely heavily on gas guzzlers to satisfy even our most basic transportation needs.
We as San Antonians need to reinvent ourselves: we need to make ourselves unique. Think of Santa Fe and its traditional architecture, recognizable anywhere, or New Orleans – a vibrant and multicultural crossroads of various societal roots. San Antonio can be that and much more. San Antonio has lost itself in a single-minded pursuit of economic progress. Its identity is a blur. We are a confused stepchild looking north towards Austin, yet looking south toward the border, but it is not too late. We can change that.
By fostering a sense of interconnectedness in the urban core, strengthened by efficient and accessible public transporation and a cohesive vision for our city’s economic and cultural future, San Antonio can eventually become a place where owning a vehicle is not a necessity. Owning an automobile can harmoniously coexist with relying on public transportation. Don’t ignore the plight of the voiceless and faceless majority in favor of the vocal minority.
However long your tenure as mayor of San Antonio is, don’t forget all the progress Mayor Julián Castro contributed for all of us. Building on his legacy does not make you weak, but rebranding it as the City of San Antonio’s legacy would make us all that much stronger.
*Featured/top image: A faint view of downtown San Antonio’s skyline as seen from the Northside. Photo by Iris Dimmick.
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Amen! I lived in the Stone Oak area for many years. I now reside downtown. So I have seen both sides of this issue, and I am glad to see that someone living on the periphery sees the need for urban development. Thank you for a very insightful letter and I hope that she listens to you!
I think you have it backwards, it was the minority (who stood to gain financially) that were pushing this so called improvement. As a downtown resident who actually uses public transportation, it is my opinion that it was unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer future funds. Public transportation is readily available, especially in the downtown area which is already easy to traverse on foot, bicycle (b-Cycles available), trolley, and buses. What is needed is monitoring of existing routes and usage and efficient scheduling to assist those using the system and potential users with the peak hour commutes. Primo was a step in the right direction and received my full support, however, this project was fraught with problems including the financial gains of those on the board, which was the pushing point for most of its opponents.
I agree with you that the city spends a lot of money on northside road project and also that public transit improvements are needed and should be funded. However, these facts do not mean that a streetcar system would be anything other than a monumental waste of money that would have robbed funds from other opportunities to improve public transit and would be a money-losing black hole of transit funds for decades to come.
Unlike you I actually live downtown and work downtown. I can guarantee you that I would not have been a user of the streetcar system any more than I or any other downtowner use the current bus system. I can get around just fine on foot or using the b-cycle system. If I ever needed motorized transport, there are plenty of empty trolleys running all over downtown every few minutes that are cheap to ride.
In the end, a streetcar is nothing more than a very very expensive bus–except that its routes cannot be modified without great expense, it requires years of tearing up the streets downtown to build it, and the installation of ugly overhead wires up and down the routes. The money saved can pay for many more practical ways to improve public transit throughout the city.
Now, if you want to talk about a “real” light rail system that would connect suburbs where people live to downtown and other areas where people work, I am all ears. It would probably take multi-billions of dollars to build something like that, but people might actually use it.
Light rail was shot down by the voters multiple times already… many if not most of the same people who opposed the streetcar have also vehemently opposed light rail. They went so far as to insist that “streetcar = light rail” and had the presumptive future Governor file a complaint on their behalf to that effect.
The next time light rail goes before the voters (if it ever does), there will be the same sort of opposition as you’ve seen to the streetcar. The only thing that would ultimately please such opponents is the end to any government subsidy of public transportation, period… even buses.
These are the people that have prevailed time and again, turning back every VIA plan as a “boondoggle”. They’ll even try to stop expansion of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) now that BRT is the next logical step for VIA to take.
Someone please explain to me, when did pushing the pause button on implementing a streetcar become interpreted as a total annihilation of a Comprehensive Transportation Plan? This whole, “But I Want It NOW” attitude isn’t productive.
There are plenty of other options to look at regarding TOD. Just because the streetcar got shut down for now doesn’t mean that the Mayor doesn’t want to go forward with finding new ways to improve mass transit in San Antonio.
Use your efforts in better ways than to cross your arms and pout. Let’s get back to the drawing board and figure out how we can get this done in a way that benefits our city in a COMPREHENSIVE manner.
Wilber Castro, public transportation is not non-existent in Hill Country Village. VIA has stops along Blanco and 281. I think VIA Express still has a major stop in front of the Baptist church on 281 just south of 1604. The routes do need to be expanded throughout this area, but some are available.
I agree with JIMTX about a streetcar tying up money and streets while under construction. It isn’t flexible to allow for different needs. In the near future, I think solar powered busses will become more economical to purchase and be more useful. These downtown streetcars wouldn’t be the light rail which we do need.
I would like to know why there’s not a single Starbucks along the Guadalupe – Castroville technological corridor.
Try Cruzan’s instead.