SAN ANTONIO – Late-night service workers and bar hoppers alike could soon have a new way to get home from downtown as VIA Metropolitan Transit plans a pilot program using VIA Link and ridesharing.
Even after the daily bustle is over in downtown, the multitude of bar, restaurant, hotel and retail workers with late-night shifts still need a way to get home. But bus service trickles off around midnight and doesn’t kick back up until about 4 a.m.
“We’ve heard stories of people who, when they get off work — say 2 a.m. — they know the first bus isn’t going to be at the bus stop until say 4:15,” said Curtis Koleber, VIA’s vice-president of transportation. “So they will walk however many miles to that bus stop and they will wait until that first bus gets there.”
VIA is planning a six-month pilot program that it expects to launch sometime later this year. From 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Mondays through Fridays, riders would be able to use the VIA Link app to get a ride into or out of the downtown area and somewhere else inside Loop 410.
“Some workers actually — like at restaurants, or hotels more likely — they’re allowed to stay in the lobby ‘til the time the bus comes and then they can go out. But we just wanted to get rid of that and provide something.”
The rides would be to and from established bus stops using VIA Link vans for the regular $1.30 fare. Koleber said they have vehicles that accommodate wheelchair users too.
The rides would have to start or end within the downtown area, though. The service could not be used to travel solely within downtown, or for a trip entirely outside of it.
The boundaries of the downtown area for the program haven’t been finalized, but it’s currently expected to be bound by Martin Street through East Houston Street on the north, Cherry Street to the east, Durango Boulevard to the south and Frio Street on the west.
If it would take 20 minutes or longer for a VIA Link vehicle to pick up a rider, the riders would have the option to take an Uber or Lyft instead. They would get a $15 credit, plus their regular fare, to use toward that ride.
If the total cost of the ride exceeds that, VIA says riders could choose to pay the remaining difference, take a shorter trip, or wait for VIA link.
Though the program is aimed at helping workers, anyone with the VIA Link app would be able to use it.
VIA has $603,000 for the program in its proposed budget, Koleber said, and they have $50,000 from Uber to be used for rideshare credits.
Though a spokesman confirmed the Uber grant would be used specifically toward Uber rides, the $15 credits for rideshare trips would be available for riders using Lyft, too. The spokesman said those would just be paid out of VIA’s funding.
Koleber said he doesn’t currently have a benchmark for what will count as a success for the program, though he’d like to see it grow over the six months of the program.
If it does prove successful, he said VIA staff would need to go back to the agency’s Board of Trustees to get more funding approved to expand the pilot, try another one, or make the program permanent.
“If they want to look at going beyond 410, if they wanna look at it going on weekends also and not just Monday through Friday, these are all decisions that we can certainly look at the data and say ‘here’s what we’re seeing,’ and then the board will obviously make the final call,” he said.
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