Inside the enchilada-red Central Library last week, local transportation and housing officials laid out a complex policy framework for how the city wants to shape growth around one of the biggest mass transit investments in San Antonio’s history.
While many residents and leaders have broadly embraced plans to increase ridership, walkability and density along an 11.7-mile, north-south corridor, others have been skeptical that the city’s first advanced rapid transit bus line will deliver on its promises of connectivity and economic booms — or if it does deliver, that it will lead to gentrification and displacement.
“We have too much construction and we have too much restriction of traffic in this city right now,” one man said during the meeting, objecting to the project’s timeline and priority lanes for buses. He left the room shouting “no” to the project.
Small business owners in San Antonio have been plagued by extended street and utility construction projects in recent months, and this would add another major project in a high-traffic area.
“I recognize the importance of great public transit, but … my tenants have been through hell in the last five years,” said Kirk Cypel, chief development officer for CBG Real Estate, which owns property on San Pedro Avenue. “They’ve been through COVID, they’re in a weak economy and now they’re asking what will happen when construction starts — how can we protect them?”
Part of the draft transit-oriented policy framework suggests establishing a program that would support small businesses along future transit corridors. The city wouldn’t have to look far, as it already started a grant program for small businesses impacted by construction.
That framework, which is still under development by the City of San Antonio, includes new zoning rules and other policy recommendations aimed at removing barriers for more residential, commercial and mixed-use development surrounding mass transit routes. That’s what city planners call transit-oriented development or TOD.
Meanwhile, VIA Metropolitan Transit is preparing to break ground next year on the $446 million Green Line, a faster and more frequent bus route from the airport that will run through downtown to the missions. It also has plans to build a Silver Line in 2027, which could run from North Gen. McMullen Drive on the West Side along West Commerce Street and East Houston Street to the Frost Bank Center on the East Side.
These massive initiatives have some neighborhood leaders nervous they will bring too much traffic and change to some of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.
The city’s next TOD community meeting will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 2 at the Woodlawn Lake Park Gym, 1103 Cincinnati Ave.
The idea is to create “compact, livable, walkable neighborhoods with multimodal transportation access while strengthening and sustaining our established neighborhoods,” Catherine Hernandez, director of the city’s transportation department, said during the community meeting last week.
And development is already coming to the bustling San Pedro corridor. In January, City Council approved a zoning change for four acres along the avenue, paving the way for mixed-use housing and commercial developments. The city also plans to purchase several lots along the Green Line to set aside for affordable housing projects.
While VIA’s Green Line and the city’s TOD policy are separate, independent initiatives, the organizations have been collaborating for years to align them.
“Transit-oriented development is a big buzzword, but the city is doing a lot to lay the foundation,” David Robinson, Jr., development manager for local developer Weston Urban, said during a CityFest San Antonio event on Monday. “I hope that we all lean into that advanced rapid transit system to make that a success.”
Last year, Council members Sukh Kaur (D1), Teri Castillo (D5) and Marc Whyte (D10), filed a council consideration request formally asking the city to create a TOD plan, but the policy framework had been years in the making.
TOD and bus rapid transit are key elements of the SA Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan adopted by City Council nearly a decade ago in 2016. TOD is part of the city’s affordable housing policy adopted in 2018 as well as the implementation plan in 2021. Like the housing policy, the city will ultimately adopt an implementation plan for TOD, which will be developed next year. The city’s climate action plan also prioritizes TOD.
“This is quite literally where the rubber meets the road,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg told the San Antonio Report. “There’s always great vision and conversation and quite a lot of platitudes come campaign time, but when it comes to the decisions necessary to achieve that vision, the question that we will always have to ask is: Are we willing to do it?”
Nirenberg, who is serving his final term as mayor, acknowledged that concern about TOD and mass transit — and change in general — is inevitable. Parking, traffic and neighborhood landscapes will be impacted.
“All those are tactical issues that we can solve together,” Nirenberg said. “I only see the support for transit building and continuing to build for the foreseeable future. … We should not waver.”
Kaur, whose district includes nearly all of the Green Line, said she will be a strong advocate for TOD’s success.
“This is an opportunity to make a difference,” and put a dent in affordable housing and transportation access gaps, Kaur said.
TOD in San Antonio
According to officials, VIA currently serves about 4,500 rides per day along San Pedro Avenue, Navarro Street, South St. Mary’s Street and Roosevelt Avenue route that will become the Green Line.
With speed and frequency similar to light rail that VIA calls “advanced rapid transit,” the agency aims to nearly double that to 8,000 by 2028, just one year after it’s set to open, and more than 13,000 by 2040. About 60%, or roughly $270 million, of the project’s funding comes from competitive federal grants; the rest through VIA’s reserves and a redirected sales tax voters approved in 2020.
And this money isn’t just for buses and bus stops, Jon Gary Herrera, senior vice president of Public Engagement at VIA, told the San Antonio Report.
“It’s going to be an investment that makes improvements to the street, to the sidewalks [and] adding trees — you name it,” Herrera said. “It’s going to be physically changing the landscape.”
Having a TOD policy is not a requirement for the federal funds that VIA was awarded for the Green Line, but it is considered best practice by the Federal Transit Administration, he said.
“You see development naturally starts happening along these systems,” Herrera said, but TOD policies can help cities guide what gets built there.
The agency received a federal grant to hire a consultant to start work on TOD in 2018, but that was delayed during the coronavirus pandemic. Since VIA and the city had already started looking into TOD when council members submitted their policy request last year, much of the legwork had already begun.
A city task force including neighborhood leaders, VIA, developers and other stakeholders started meeting in February to review and adjust the code language.
San Antonio already has a TOD zoning district on the books, but it’s more than 20 years old and has only been used three times. It allows for massive developments in neighborhoods anywhere within a half mile of a single bus stop.
“There are some minimal parking requirements, but there’s no height imitations,” Hernandez said. “We’re taking away somebody’s ability to be able to apply for that code” who doesn’t have property close to a rapid transit corridor.
The new code, as currently drafted, drastically limits eligibility for TOD zoning to land adjacent to the Green Line. The boundaries expand to maximize development near more vacant, commercial areas near the airport and downtown and contract to protect neighborhoods from overdevelopment, Hernandez said.
When more transit corridors are added, such as the Silver Line, the city “will have to go through a process to create the boundary maps” for each, she said.
No forced re-zoning
Properties within the TOD boundaries near the Green Line will not be automatically rezoned, Hernandez said. That has been one of the biggest misconceptions at community meetings.
“That property owner still has to go through a rezoning process to determine if they can even get TOD [zoning],” she explained. That process includes review by the Zoning Commission and ultimately approval by City Council.
“This process does not change the rezoning process,” she said.
Some residents in the Monte Vista neighborhood, which borders dozens of blocks of San Pedro Avenue to the east, have particular concerns about commercial encroachment and density,
“What we are concerned about is the protection of the residential character in the already built environment,” said Tony Garcia, who chairs the zoning and code compliance committee for the Monte Vista Historical Association and is a member of the TOD task force.
After several meetings about the boundary maps and other restrictions, the Planning Commission’s Technical Advisory Committee recommended that inner city single-family residential lots should be removed from the list of properties eligible for TOD zoning and property owners should have to apply for a special exception if they want to serve or sell alcohol on the premises.
The Steering Committee for the Tier 1 Neighborhood Coalition celebrated these recommended adjustments in the code draft earlier this month, but Garcia, who also serves on the steering committee, noted that they may not survive the process.
The new TOD zoning district still needs to be reviewed by the planning and zoning commissions, the Housing Commission and ultimately voted on by City Council.
“We definitely will galvanize neighborhood support for these particular provisions that continue to protect neighborhoods,” Garcia said.
More policy work ahead
The new zoning district and policy framework are on the calendar for a Dec. 19 City Council vote, but the work and investment can’t end there, said Jim Bailey, a principal at Alamo Architects and co-chair of the Housing Commission’s Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing Subcommittee.
“In my personal opinion, zoning is the least important part of all of this,” Bailey said. “What was missing was a plan to put all the other infrastructure in that’s going to be needed: The things that make complete streets, the things that enable connectivity. Things like trees and wide enough sidewalks that are protected and an updated bike network plan to show where the cycling infrastructure is going to go.”
That’s where the TOD policy implementation plan — and millions more dollars into infrastructure — would come in.
“Once you get the line in, you’ve got to get people to where they can utilize those transit resources,” Bailey said.
And the developers have to find the corridor attractive enough to invest in.
“There are so many policy issues in the way,” he said, from OHSA requirements to CPS Energy regulations to the city’s tree planting rules.
“To make TOD truly function is going to require a fairly significant and sustained investment on the part of public entities along the corridors … for a significant period of time,” he said. “It took us 75 years to build ourselves into this situation. It’s going to take more than a bond cycle to build our way out.”
‘Bang for our buck’
Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the Transit Oriented Development Institute in Washington, D.C., said a bus system can’t deliver the same, long-term promises that rail can for TOD.
“[Rail] signals to the development community that this is going to be, potentially, a great new community here, but a bus stop alone does not do that,” said Kunz, who is also president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association.
“No matter what the city does with … all these fancy sidewalks and everything else, they’re still gonna be standing there waiting for the developers,” Kunz said.
Bus systems that attempt TOD are typically too slow to attract wider, more affluent ridership with disposable income, he said.
But a 2015 change to San Antonio’s city charter requires voter approval for any proposed streetcar or light rail project in or through the city — and there’s little if any political will to put that on the ballot. If the city wants mass transit today, it can’t be on rails.
“We can get much more bang for our buck [with buses] and have it be functionally, the equivalent of light rail, but for much less expense,” Nirenberg said. “That eventually, I think, will pave the way for us to make a decision in the future [on] if and when we want to go to a full rail line.”
Local residential and mixed-use developer David Adelman, who previously served on VIA’s Innovative Services Advisory Group, said it’s still unclear if or when the corridor will attract the kind of development needed to fulfill the TOD vision of a walkable, compact district.
“I’m hopeful,” Adelman said. “VIA is gonna have to prove it. … We shall see.”
While VIA has launched an on-demand service in some areas, the system still hasn’t solved the “last mile” issue for potential bus riders who could afford to choose rideshare or have cars of their own, he said. Those “choice riders” will be harder to convince.
VIA’s Route 5, from the airport to downtown, currently takes about 42 minutes around the 9 a.m. rush hour. VIA estimates that the Green line will cut that down by 30% to 28 minutes. Travel time from the airport to Steves Avenue near the missions will be reduced by about half from 83 to 42 minutes.
A personal or rideshare vehicle, however, can make those trips via highways in about 15 and 20 minutes, respectively.
Once more residential and workforce nodes are connected throughout the city, Adelman said those “choice riders” may start to consider ditching their cars, but the rise of autonomous vehicles may further change the landscape of transit.
But for those who can’t afford a car, let alone an autonomous one, the bus is the only way many San Antonians get to work, the grocery store or school.
“We understand [that] most San Antonians don’t use our system. We get that part,” Herrera said, “but there’s a misnomer of who uses our system. … The number one reason, by far, the number one reason folks use our service, is to get to their place of work.”
The more people who understand mass transit’s connection to “economic vitality and our economic engine of San Antonio … [that] gives us a really good platform to have good, productive conversations” with the community, Herrera said.
Displacement prevention
One of the top concerns brought up at public meetings regarding TOD has been displacement — that the transit and infrastructure investments will drive up property values and push out residents who can’t afford it.
“Displacement is always a concern when there’s significant improvement to infrastructure going in,” Nirenberg said. “That’s why [we developed the] displacement assessment tool and accommodating or mitigating those impacts are part of the TOD policy.”
The city has a long list of ways it can prevent and mitigate displacement in its Strategic Housing Implementation Plan (SHIP), Bailey noted.
That includes subsidized housing, land trusts, home rehabilitation programs, legal assistance and more that could be targeted in these corridors.
During a City Council briefing earlier this month, city staff outlined how these strategies — including the substantial housing bond in 2027 — could be implemented as part of TOD.
“The trends and data show that TOD is an accelerator for increased property value, predatory practices, land speculation and so many other practices that squeeze out working-class families,” Councilwoman Castillo said. “To hear that city leadership is having conversations about investing along these lines for deeply affordable housing, I think is a step in the right direction.”
In November, VIA paused its plans to redevelop its Scobey warehouse complex into a hub for retail, commercial and residential uses on the West Side near the proposed Silver Line. Affordable housing advocates protested the plan because half of the planned apartments would have market-rate rent.
But there should be opportunities for all San Antonians, regardless of income, to enjoy the potential amenities of a thriving TOD corridor, Councilman Whyte said. “There needs to be a mix of housing options.”
‘Transit-enhanced neighborhoods?’
The heated debate and discussion surrounding the issue demonstrates that TOD has a bit of a branding issue, said Leilah Powell, executive director of the nonprofit LISC San Antonio. “Transit-oriented development” doesn’t necessarily capture the intent.
Maybe, Powell suggested, “transit-enhanced neighborhoods?”
“We’ve got to figure out a way for housing affordability and public transit — these community goods — to be seen as valuable, safe and accessible positives,” she said.
But the agencies and partners involved need to live up to that promise.
There are examples, such as the CapMetro light rail in Austin, that didn’t live up to expectations, Powell said, because the right controls weren’t in place.
“It resulted in more white people, more high-income people, and actually more trips by cars,” she said. In 2020, voters in Austin approved a $300 million anti-displacement fund to preserve and create affordable housing along rail or bus lines.
LISC is working with VIA to establish a mechanism or a position that would oversee equitable development along the east-west Silver Line, Powell said.
The idea is to work with residents and property owners to make sure the people who live there now, in some of the poorest zip codes in the city, will be the same people who benefit from it years from now when it’s built.
“We’re starting to coordinate with the community-based groups that already exist, whether they’re nonprofits, they’re churches or schools … and starting to work with them — on listening first,” she said.
LISC, a housing funder that also works on policy to “build health, wealth and power for excluded and disadvantaged people,” aims to create curricula for the community to learn how to participate in future opportunities in transit corridor, she said.
“Most people who are poor in San Antonio are women and children. [About] 40% of the residents at Opportunity Home are children,” said Powell, who sits on the board of the local public housing authority. “We have to start designing and planning now for this system to serve women and children. That’s the priority.”
