Original article published on San Antonio Express News on September 29th, 2025.
Written by Staff Writer, Richard Webner.
After a rocky start, VIA Metropolitan Transit’s downtown ride-hailing service has seen a surge in ridership and is now meeting most of its expectations, the agency says.
In January, members of VIA’s board of directors expressed alarm after the agency reported that its downtown VIA Link zone — the fifth such ride-hailing zone the agency had introduced since 2019 — had an average of 75 daily passengers on weekdays and 25 on weekends in its first 120 days of operation, far below the estimated 175 on weekdays and 100 on weekends.
In the period between Aug. 25 and Sept. 21, the zone had an average of 188 weekday passengers and 43 weekend passengers, according to numbers that VIA released in response to an inquiry from the San Antonio Express-News. That period covers roughly the month after the University of Texas at San Antonio, with its growing downtown campus, began its fall semester.
The service’s cost per passenger was $15.42 during that period, coming just under the agency’s target of $15.46 and drastically below the $47.74 that VIA had reported for the first 120 days.
In VIA Link zones, customers can use the agency’s app or call a phone number to request a ride, typically in a white van. Each trip costs $1.30, to be paid through the app, with cash or with a regular bus pass.
The recent turnaround comes as a relief for VIA officials, after board members in January mulled whether they might have to pull the plug on the zone if its numbers did not improve. That month, Louis Cooper, the agency’s assistant board secretary, called the early numbers “horrendous.”
“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of customer growth month to month. We’re seeing great adoption of it, great awareness of it,” Jon Gary Herrera, the agency’s president and CEO, said in a phone interview. “These zones always take a little bit of time to establish themselves. It’s a new service that’s being established in an area of town it hasn’t been in before.”
Along with downtown, the current zones serve the Northwest Side around UTSA’s main campus, the Northeast Side around the crossing of Loop 1604 and Nacogdoches Road, the East Side around Old Seguin Road and the South Side around Palo Alto College.
VIA debuted the downtown zone last September, with boundaries stretching as far west as Medina Street, as far south as César E. Chávez Boulevard, east to Interstate 37 and north to Quincy Street. The zone can also take passengers to a stop at the Pearl and to certain parts of the King William neighborhood in Southtown.
VIA’s five-year plan to restore its service and ridership to pre-COVID levels, known as the Better Bus Plan, hinges in part on the creation of VIA Link zones to replace some existing bus routes, freeing up drivers to increase the frequency of other routes. In the years after the pandemic — during which VIA could not train new drivers — a shortage of drivers forced VIA to cut the frequency of routes across the city.
VIA has a contract with RideCo, a company based in Ontario, Canada, to operate the vans in the VIA Link zones.
The agency plans to debut a new zone, encompassing the Brooks community on the Southeast Side, in November, to replace portions of the 25 and 30 bus routes. Altogether, the agency is planning four new zones as part of the Better Bus Plan.
Unlike the other zones, the downtown VIA Link has numerous bus routes running through it. VIA officials have touted the zone as providing a “last mile” transit option for passengers, taking them to specific points in downtown after they ride in from far across the city. For example, someone could take the 93 bus into downtown from the Shops at La Cantera, then use VIA Link to get to Hemisfair, the Pearl or Southtown.
Altogether, the downtown VIA Link zone transported 4,067 passengers between Aug. 25 and Sept. 21, according to VIA.
At the same time it launched the zone, VIA also took over the Little Runner. The e-shuttle service was created last year through a partnership between UTSA and the downtown nonprofit Centro San Antonio to carry students on a fixed route between Interstate 35, Dolorosa Street, Flores Street and Nueva Street, linking the facilities of UTSA’s growing downtown campus.
That shuttle now operates as part of the VIA Link zone. It is doing well enough that UTSA is looking to add service to the One Riverwalk Place skyscraper it purchased last year, at 700 N. St. Mary’s St., Herrera said.
Trish DeBerry, CEO of Centro San Antonio, said the start of UTSA’s fall semester in late August had helped boost ridership in the downtown zone. In the last week, 726 of the university’s students booked VIA Link rides through VIA’s U-Pass program, she said.
“We’re encouraged. It’s taken a little while for the numbers to get to the levels that we had” for the Little Runner, she said.
She stated that she hopes that VIA Link will transition to using all-electric vehicles. As of now, its fleet includes a couple of electric “micromobility” vehicles reserved for the Little Runner, but most of the vehicles are Dodge Caravans, she said.
The zone’s usage data indicates that UTSA students make a “conscientious preference” to book the electric Little Runner vehicles, DeBerry said.
“As downtown grows as an entertainment district, and UTSA expands, we are going to have to keep innovating in the micromobility space,” she said. “Or even the autonomous space — because we know Waymo is coming.”
