The first physical work on VIA Metropolitan Transit’s Green Line is expected to begin this year, kicking off a roughly three-year construction process for the city’s first Advanced Rapid Transit bus route.
Relocation of utilities along the route is expected to last through the end of the year, according to a presentation VIA made the City Council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week. That timeline shows the Green Line opening service in August of 2027.
The 11.7-mile north-south running route, known as the Green Line, is the first of two VIA bus lines in the works that are expected to run more like rail, using their own lanes to move faster and avoid vehicle traffic.
The Green Line will run from the San Antonio International Airport to Brooks City Base, and the Silver Line will run east-west from North Gen. McMullen Drive to the Frost Bank Center.
While local leaders are enthusiastic about the development they expect to accompany the routes, VIA has been working to reassure surrounding neighborhoods and businesses about traffic disruptions in the meantime.
“One of the things I hadn’t thought about previously was the utility relocation… seeing some of that on there gave me a little bit of heart palpitations,” Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1), whose district encompasses the San Pedro corridor, where the Green Line will be located, said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “What is that going to be like for residents?”
VIA’s vice president of program delivery Manjiri Akalkotkar said the utility work won’t be needed “corridor-wide,” but there are several places where utility poles must be moved to construct the bus stations or to make way for sidewalk improvements needed to access the stations.
“We are working with [the utility companies], looking at conflicts and looking at what we need to do and how we phase those and what is our fallback situation,” Akalkotkar said. “It is a risk that we have identified and we’ll continue to work to mitigate that.”
For the buses to operate free from regular traffic congestion, they’ll use their own center-running lanes on some parts of San Pedro Avenue north of downtown, then transition to dedicated lanes on the outside of traffic on other parts of San Pedro and St. Mary’s Street. That means bus stations will be in the middle of the traffic lanes in some places. In others, they’ll be curbside.
VIA spokesman Josh Baugh declined to provide the San Antonio Report with additional details about when or where the utility work would begin. It could start by “late 2024,” he said, and “sequencing of that work will be determined in the coming months.”
Kaur said at Tuesday’s meeting that residents will want to know more about that process and timeline. Despite VIA’s many public outreach efforts, she said, many of her constituents still have little understanding about how the Green Line will work and how the construction process will affect them.
“I remember the first time y’all briefed me on this… you told me about the amount of community engagement that had already been done, and I was super impressed,” Kaur told VIA officials. “And then yet, I feel like every time I talk to or go to any neighborhood meeting, there’s still a million and one questions.”
