SOCORRO, Texas (KVIA) — The City of Socorro agreed to rejoin the El Paso Transit Authority (ETA). Starting Oct. 1, Socorro will operate and maintain its \u00a1\u00e1vanzando! microtransit services, El Paso County said.<\/p>\n
On July 29, the ETA Board of Directors authorized the proposal to operate and maintain the \u00a1\u00e1vanzando! services. The Socorro City Council accepted and agreed to join the ETA Aug. 6.<\/p>\n
The transit service will expand to connect Socorro, San Elizario and Clint, the county said. Passengers can ride for free and use ETA amenities such as bike racks, Wi-Fi, and the ETA app. <\/p>\n
Through the subcontractor Transdev, ETA will operate \u00a1\u00e1vanzando! seven days a week. From Monday-Friday, the service will run from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. On Saturday-Sunday, it will run between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., the county said.<\/p>\n
The county said Socorro will contribute $5,165 for regional transit access and $253,000 for the operation and maintenance of \u00a1\u00e1vanzando!<\/p>\n
A program City of Socorro Mayor Rudy Cruz Jr said was made out of necessity to serve the people of his community. <\/p>\n
“I represent a very underserved population, the transportation services from the past were not going to pick up the elderly woman at her front door that needed to go pick up her prescriptions,” Cruz said. “They weren’t going to pick her up to take her to her doctor’s appointments. We’ve created that, the City of Socorro created a system that’s going to cater to the needs of our residents, especially with a large elderly population.”<\/p>\n
Something one Socorro resident, Ivette Jurado, said she has not used herself but said it is still something that is good for the community. <\/p>\n
“That is very good for here for the community,” Jurado said. “Because I have gone through that way before I got my vehicle. We only had busses that were run down around Socorro and up Horizon and down, which that was a shuttle some time back and I know personally that a lot of people had a hard time with that personally for transportation. Even people that have disabilities as myself.”<\/p>\n
Jurado also said even if taxes did have to be raised to pay for it, she thinks it would be an expense worth paying for. <\/p>\n
“Yes, it is and I talk from personal experience,” Jurado said. “We all don’t have jobs, especially right now how everything’s happening with the government and everything. We have struggles so yes it would be great for a lot of people to have that help.”<\/p>\n
Cruz feels after one year of the City of Socorro running the service independently it’s been a success, keeping it under budget which City Manager Adriana Rodarte told ABC-7 was $220,000. <\/p>\n
“Yeah, it is successful. It is, however, very, very new and it’s premature because we’ve never operated a transportation service here for our residents,” Cruz said. “Especially for a city of our size, we do pack a punch and we do have just sophisticated people working in our offices that are continuously monitoring the trends, to allow us to make better decisions as a council as a whole, make better money decisions for our residents.”<\/p>\n
Decisions Cruz said will make sure the expansion like this will not cause any increase in taxes for Socorro residents to pay and said he’s willing to look for ‘any untapped resource’ to avoid any raising of taxes. <\/p>\n
“This is at no cost to our our residents, we’re not raising taxes for this,” Cruz said. “This is a service that we wanted to create and provide for our residents and any untapped resource that we haven’t found. We’re going to continue looking for them.”<\/p>\n
Socorro will assign two vehicles to ETA for operation and maintenance. The county said ETA will provide administrative support and assist with planning for future bus shelters and anchor stations.<\/p>\n
“In the past year, Socorro \u00a1\u00e1vanzando! carried 6,896 passenger trips which shows that transit is
catching on in Socorro and we look forward to ETA taking our microtransit service to the next level,”
stated Alejandra Valadez, the City\u2019s Development Director and ETA Board Member.<\/p>\n
In 2025, El Paso County commissioners voted to end transit service within Socorro on ETA’s recommendation. The City of Socorro completed its \u00a1\u00e1vanzando! replacement plan July 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOCORRO, Texas (KVIA) — The City of Socorro agreed to rejoin the El Paso Transit Authority (ETA). Starting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[447,138,140,139,5369,55270],"class_list":["post-412715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-community","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-public-transportation","tag-socorro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412715","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=412715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}