{"id":169157,"date":"2026-02-18T03:55:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T03:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/169157\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T03:55:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T03:55:06","slug":"mayor-gina-ortiz-jones-discusses-fare-free-via-pilot-program-upcoming-bexar-county-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/169157\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones discusses fare-free VIA pilot program, upcoming Bexar County races"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO \u2013 San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones joined KSAT\u2019s 6 O\u2019Clock News on Tuesday night to discuss a range of topics, including a proposed fare-free pilot program for VIA Metropolitan Transit and the upcoming Bexar County elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jones said the proposed fare-free pilot program for VIA has \u201cfloated\u201d on the council for several years. <\/p>\n

>> VIA employee union \u2018not on board\u2019 with free bus fare push<\/a><\/p>\n

The program, which proposes to get rid of fares for riders, is a way to help \u201ccost-burdened neighbors,\u201d Jones said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we think about helping people, this is a way in which we can do that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Jones pointed out that when she attended the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Los Angeles, she learned from other cities, like Tucson, that have successfully implemented fare-free transit programs.<\/p>\n

With early voting underway, Jones highlighted the significance of upcoming races for Bexar County judge and district attorney<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we hear about backlogs in domestic violence or in other areas, we want to make sure that there\u2019s somebody who has experience with these types of cases and then an actual plan to bring those down,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

She also discussed the ongoing search for a new police chief<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cA chief of police that shares your values and has experiences that I think bring to bear kind of where we\u2019re at,\u201d Jones said. \u201c… Let\u2019s look at all the other preventative aspects that we need to be looking at to make sure that we are staffing appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the full interview in the video player above.<\/p>\n

Read also:<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones joined KSAT\u2019s 6 O\u2019Clock News on Tuesday night to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[698,288,12132,82,84,83,7392,21310,14165],"class_list":["post-169157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-bexar-county","tag-elections","tag-ksat-qa","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-saq","tag-via-metropolitan-transit","tag-vote-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}