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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Ep. 32: San Antonio - America's Largest City Without Light Rail!
Join us as we embark on a public transit adventure. We navigate San Antonio's multi-tiered bus system, which reveals the importance of buses in a town devoid of a rail network. Alongside insights from the Strong Towns San Antonio chapter, our ride through history and culture takes us to San Antonio's historic Spanish missions, the Pearl District, the Alamo and many more sites. We reflect on the potential of San Antonio's public transport and the local community's efforts toward improvement.
More info on Strong Towns
Doors are closing. Visit San Antonio and get around using only public transit. Being the largest US city without a rail network, that meant a whole lot of buses, bikes, scooters and more. We also met up with the local chapter of Strong Towns to learn more about the area. All of this and more on Transit Tangents. Barring the humidity right there, if you just saw it on the lens, we're in San Antonio, on the Riverwalk. On the Riverwalk, and we're actually we can walk and talk a little bit. We're on our way to catch the first bus. We're going to go up to the Japanese Tea Garden.
Speaker 2:We made it in last night on the Amtrak, caught the Primo bus. Primo, primo, it was something. It was something. I don't know if primo is the word I would use to describe it, but it was decent, it was fine. Yeah, it was on time. We thought we had to run to it. For those of you just listening, imagine some sprinting with heavy backpacks here while also dodging quite a few puddles. Turns out that it was like a time point, so we ran for no reason, but that's OK. Now we're going to go catch. There's kind of a series of buses here, series of different tiers of buses, seems like.
Speaker 4:We're going to try to check out at least three or four of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Primo is near the top, so what we're about to get on is the metro level, which is like every half an hour service Not perfect, but it will take us almost exactly to where we need to go.
Speaker 4:So we have about 11 hours in San Antonio, so we'll see how this goes. It is a decent little bus shelter. Yeah, the bus station is great. So Louis and I have made it out of the hotel we saw a little bit of the Riverwalk, got our coffee which is very necessary and we have walked to a downtown bus station waiting for the 8 bus and from here we're going to grab the 8 bus and we're going to go to the Japanese.
Speaker 2:Tea Gardens. It's also this, what is it? Brackenridge Park.
Speaker 4:Brackenridge. Brackenridge Park I kept wanting to call it Halcones Park, ah, yes, brackenridge Park.
Speaker 6:Route 88 north of St Mary's and Reddell Park and Ride.
Speaker 2:As we were riding buses throughout the day, each one had a nice looking display showing you where you were and the next few stops coming up, making it much easier to navigate on the shot. Oh, do I push you? Just push it, I expect it to open.
Speaker 4:Here we got the shot of the bus driving away. Oh, Do I push you? Just push it. I expect it to open.
Speaker 2:Here I'll get this shot of the bus driving away. Uh, this is checking the uh Cities by Diana box a little bit Intersection core.
Speaker 1:San Antonio embodies the perfect mix of parking lot build and interchange. Core that they put a parking lot inside of an interchange.
Speaker 4:So we are walking over to bracken ridge park. Uh, it's a good time to talk about it. Why did we choose san antonio lewis?
Speaker 2:yeah, so uh, san antonio is almost ate it right there.
Speaker 1:You can literally see the slip on the ground that would have been hilarious.
Speaker 2:Oh, you should have fallen for the clicks. I mean, san antonio is the seventh largest city in the US. It's also only about an hour and a half by car south of us, or about two and a half hours by train. Last night, yes, which we did the Amtrak. There's going to be an episode where we specifically talk about Amtrak and use some of that footage. So if you're not subscribed, you might as well subscribe, so you see that when it comes out, it's coming up. That episode actually came out three weeks ago and you can go watch or listen to it after you have seen this one. Also, if you haven't already, please hit the like button. It helps us out quite a bit and consider leaving a comment if you find anything interesting throughout the episode.
Speaker 4:It's also the largest city in the US without a train system.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:That was really interesting to me is that if we're not going to have a train system, we're going to rely really heavily on buses. Also, there's a brand new chapter of Strongtowns here in San Antonio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and our friend Kelsey, who seemingly gets mentioned in every episode, connected us to the Strongtown San Antonio folks and they've been awesome and have sent over a bunch of recommendations, places we should check out. And later today we're actually going to meet up with some of the Strongtown San Antonio folks to get some kind of added context on some of the stuff we're going to see today. Obviously, like as a visitor, we can see what we can see, like sidewalks that disappear in the middle of a park and that sort of thing, but they're going to be able to give us some added context and throughout the day, throughout the day, we may kind of cut in and out with some of that added context. So keep an eye out for that sort of thing.
Speaker 4:Why is everything in San Antonio in an old quarry?
Speaker 2:All right. So we were hoping to get some tea slash breakfast here, but the gardens themselves that we just walk around, which are really nice, this nice little area they open at 7, but the restaurant slash tea house does not open until 10. So yes but we're gonna walk over towards the zoo, which is also where we're gonna be able to get the bike share, and we'll probably take the bikes down towards an area called the Pearl which is supposed to be a nice little Pearl District awesome, it's an old brewery that they turned into a hotel, an apartment and a food court.
Speaker 2:It's supposed to be a pretty like walkable area and whatnot? I haven't been there yet.
Speaker 4:Oh, I'm excited for you to see it. The Pearl's really cool.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna go and pivot a little bit from eating here and we're gonna go for a little bike ride hopefully not get hangry. We're gonna go for a little bike ride, hopefully not get hangry. We found a path through Bracken Ridge Park that connects the Japanese tea garden area with the zoo. We walked for a few minutes and then popped out of the woods right at the entrance to the zoo. We'll have to save the zoo for another trip, but it is also in this Bracken Ridge Park. Yeah, there might be another transit stop further closer to it, but there's there's, not one in the park.
Speaker 4:No transit stop but we're gonna walk uh from the zoo to the nearest b cycle yes, which is right right over here, actually somewhere.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so you could bust a bike to the zoo yeah, all right, we just hit one snafu here. Uh, we in google maps, it shows that there's a b-cycle station here at the zoo and, as you can see, maybe you can see, maybe you can't there definitely is not a B cycle station here, which are some scooters there are some scooters, well, so we're gonna do a little bit of research to see if, I mean, that would be kind of a long scooter, I'm being honest, although I was gonna say long and expensive.
Speaker 2:But the B cycle, bcycle.
Speaker 4:The B-Cycle is also very expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for a day. Pass on the B-Cycle is $25. And $15 if you want it just for an hour. Their monthly passes are affordable. I'll say $33 for a month. Which is that's super fair in my opinion. But if you're here visiting, $25 for a day is yeah, it's quite a bit yeah we honestly might end up it's bikeway robbery. Bikeway robbery. To get some added context on the state of San Antonio's bike share system, here are Yamini and Austin from Strongtown, San Antonio.
Speaker 3:About a year ago there were maybe twice as many stations, but over the past few years they had issues with bike theft, which I think Austin alluded to, and also a lack of funding. So they've been consolidating stations and trying to have more bikes in each station because previous a lot of times you'd go to a station there would only be one bike or no bikes.
Speaker 5:So they're trying to make it more reliable with fewer stations it's really helpful that they've focused the remaining b-cycle stations on our best bike infrastructure, on the greenways too, so at least that the remaining bikes that they have aren't getting hit by cars or stuff like that, and the likely likelihood of theft in that area, too, is much lower, and so it's going to mean that the bikes that we still have are going to stay there and they're going to be in good condition for the long term, which is nice.
Speaker 4:We are making the case for micro mobility. We hit our roadblock where there was no bike share program, where google said there'd be a bike share program. But there are these lovely uh, that's not the word I would use, but there are these bird scooters around.
Speaker 2:We could take a bus, uh, but we want to experience the bike path, yeah, so this is our best option at the moment and there are, like, no bike share things up here, frankly, which kind of stinks, but we're making the best of it. Making the best of it, all right, let's uh, let's scoot. Seems like there's a lot of nice little trails and stuff in the park. Yeah, we probably could have found one, but confusing for now so we're also dragging 50 pound scooters around.
Speaker 2:Yes, and backpacks that are heavier than necessary, I would say now we're getting somewhere, this is nice, yeah, yeah, no, this is not bad at all. No, and it's going to be a safe crossing under the highway, basically all right.
Speaker 4:So we didn't take a, but we did scoot over from the zoo to the Pearl District.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 4:Which we're going to show you in just a second. Just a little comparison of the bike share versus the scooter. Oh yeah, For a day pass on the bike it was going to be $25, or it was about $15 for a single trip. Yeah, it cost us $10 for both scooters to get here.
Speaker 2:Total yeah Like $10 each.
Speaker 4:No $10 total.
Speaker 2:Whoa wait. I thought we were going to spend way more money on the scooters, honestly. So the scooters were cheaper than the bike share and the bike share had been removed so.
Speaker 4:So that was a win for micro mobility, wow, I wonder if the scooters are cheaper here.
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe that's you, just shocked me.
Speaker 4:Wow, yeah, this is cute. Yeah, so the Pearl District was an old brewery and when they came and redeveloped it, they used a lot of elements from the old brewery, which is really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's kind of funny, I mean from above, like looking at this on Google Maps yesterday or whatever it. This is just like it doesn't look like it's anything, because it's kind of just like surrounded by highways on it's like in an, it's in inside of a little interchange almost not an interchange, but next to one yeah, no, it's a great, it's a great district yeah, and it's close to downtown and also like right on the like, the river walk kind of pokes right through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's close to downtown and also like right on the like the correct me if I'm wrong the Riverwalk kind of pokes right through.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's right along the Riverwalk and it's right next to the art museum Nice, and this lovely fountain is here, which is the end caps of old boilers.
Speaker 2:This. Yeah. While walking through the Pearl District, we came across a B-cycle station with no bikes at it. On the station, a sign read this bike share station will be turned off on June 30th. That was only about a week after we were there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean the fact that there's no bikes at this one in an area that this is such a popular area. If anything, there should absolutely be bikes here.
Speaker 2:They're getting rid of it.
Speaker 3:Wow they're getting rid of it.
Speaker 2:Wow. I mean it's basically already off now. I don't know if you saw, but houston actually just fully got rid of theirs, like their vehicles yeah wow houston's, houston's mayor.
Speaker 2:We need to do an episode specifically houston's mayor is like killing anything transit-related, vision Zero-related, road diet stuff, like getting rid of all of it. They had a dedicated BRT line that opened recently, it has infrastructure for it, and they just canceled it. If we have anybody watching or listening from Houston with someone who might be good to talk with, get in touch. Anyway, we continued walking around the Pearl District before walking towards downtown on the Riverwalk. More development happening right across the street from it too Makes sense.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, this area is going to be a hotbed for Hotbed Hotbed Hot spot.
Speaker 2:Hot spot, hot spot for more development All right, which is good. I mean, more density makes things easier to serve by transit, yeah, all that sort of stuff, not to mention again. I mean we're gonna walk into the highway in a second but like otherwise it would have, I don't know, they did a good job of like Making this not feel like it's right next to a highway.
Speaker 4:Right, and it's sort of an expansion of the original Riverwalk, which I really appreciate, and it's just nice, yeah, so nice. Going back to our urban trails, this is a very functional urban trail for San Antonio. Definitely a city that you wouldn't think of as walkable. I really want to thank the pedestrian lobby for forcing San Antonio to build the beautiful Riverwalk.
Speaker 2:Yep, we're. We know who our true boss is with the this roads and the, the giant highway above us here. But but the pedestrian lobby gets the W for this.
Speaker 1:Although San Antonio has been forced by the pedestrian lobby to build the Riverwalk, this cheap knockoff of Amsterdam is cucked by massive stroads and parking lots on all sides, reminding the suburbanites who came here for a taste of city living who the real boss is.
Speaker 4:Oh, and there's little fish under the bridge. Yeah, I like this bridge. Oh, and there's little fish under the bridge yeah, I like this bridge.
Speaker 2:If we were able to get the B-cycles for a day pass, I think we would have ridden from where we initially started, by the zoo, through the Pearl and then from the Pearl and ended up, I believe, somehow on this Avenue b bike lane. This is nice, it's very nice. Uh, what kind of wait. How is that a flexible ball? Or is that?
Speaker 1:okay, it's flexible I was like is that a metal baller, chris?
Speaker 2:comes to san antonio and ruins their bike infrastructure don't sit on the baller that's actually pretty like good separation for the parking and stuff too. I mean, this is a top-tier bike lane in my opinion. A+ the e-bike cult approved.
Speaker 4:A+ on Avenue B.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:I give it a B+, B+ for Avenue B, avenue B+.
Speaker 2:We're going to get some more info on Broadway here in San Antonio from the Strong Counts folks later. There's been some drama. Drama on Broadway.
Speaker 4:Drama on Broadway.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. The city of San Antonio the short version is the city of San Antonio wanted to put in some better bike lanes, sidewalks, traffic calming, road diets yeah, on Broadway, and I believe the road is actually managed by TxDOT.
Speaker 4:Yeah, txdot or the state of Texas owns the roadway. Yes, and TxDOT is under the directive of Governor Greg Abbott that they shall not impede any traffic flow Right. So that means no traffic calming measures and free-flowing lanes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I believe that some of this stuff actually was started on Broadway, so there might be bike lane to nowhere kind of situation. I could be wrong on this. We're about to literally walk up and see, but we'll get more context from the Strongtowns people later. Yeah, here's some additional context from Charlie Yamini and then Tony from Strongtown, San Antonio.
Speaker 7:Broadway. The portion that is owned by the state is six lanes. It is. You turn off any street and it's a residential road. There are businesses all the way along, like it is the textbook strode. So nothing about it makes sense from a driving perspective, much less from a commuter transit walking bikes perspective.
Speaker 3:So TechStore had agreed to give it back to the city or give it to the city and then eventually, when the plans got approved, we're gonna remove a lane, add bike lanes Allocated what?
Speaker 6:80 million in bonds. And it got down to the double secret last step that nobody ever pays any attention to, and got canceled by the state until they did away with all the cool stuff which was separated bike lanes, wider sidewalks, islands down the center, so that there would be fewer turns directly, you know, left turns directly into businesses, you know. So it's wonderful we can't have that.
Speaker 2:Again, big thanks to Strong Towns for all the context here. We did not make it to the other side of the highway for the state-owned portion of Broadway, but did get to see a glimpse of what it could have looked like while walking along the city-owned corridor closer into downtown. Here's us walking through that section. One thing that I will say when you're choosing to redesign the the street here, it would have made a lot more sense to me to keep the two-way protected cycle track, that's like right over there on the main drag, so that it's easier to get to the businesses, instead of having extra street parking right here, a lot of street parking. So like, I'm okay with having some of the street parking, but have it behind the buildings over there and allow to have the bikes on here. That's, you know, that's just the way I would do it.
Speaker 2:Make this big sidewalk cafe areas with the bike lane and then put the parking behind. Right, I think that that would make sense. I mean, this is still nice, don't get me wrong, but got to get a little bit of that Texas in there, prioritizing the car storage for folks on the main street here. Yeehaw, you must park right in front, otherwise it's beautiful. We then stumbled upon some really nice looking protected bike infrastructure at an intersection near downtown. According to Strongtown San Antonio, this is some of the first infrastructure like this in the city.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm a fan. This looks really good. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it continues. On the other side, you got the little protected with the zebra dillos Zebra dillos and the squishy poles.
Speaker 4:Yeah, don't sit on them.
Speaker 2:Don't sit on them. These are interesting, like flex post things. Yeah, they're different than what we have for sure. For the afternoon, we had plans to hit a few more sites. First up was seeing what it would be like to take transit to a San Antonio Spurs game. We popped on yet another bus, this time the 24, and we were dropped off right across the street from the stadium. Important to note that we were super hot at this point and many of the bus stops throughout the day did not have any shade out. Thank you, thanks. Haven't seen one of those before. We are like three for three on on-time buses.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 4:Again, it's because there's no traffic and there's so many lanes, so many lanes. It's all free-flowing, so maybe more lanes work.
Speaker 2:They're so lane-pilled.
Speaker 4:So we made it to the Bear County Community Arenas, which includes the AT&T Center, or actually now it's the Frostbank Center, I believe, where the Spurs play. We also have the Freeman Coliseum, where it is apparently Superhero Comic Con, which we are not going to.
Speaker 2:But had we known, yeah, maybe we should have brought our superhero outfits that I don't have? There you go.
Speaker 4:This is my superhero outfit. I'm Transit Tangents man.
Speaker 2:Yes, there you go, Gondola Guy, gondola Guy.
Speaker 4:It's just a sidekick, gondola Guy.
Speaker 2:There were people who got on the bus with us. We were kind of near the Alamo and they were definitely like visiting San Antonio and they went from the Alamo basically to this Comic-Con thing. We're watching it like walk in right now. So you know, I would say as a tourist I'm ordinarily apprehensive about taking the bus places because it's more confusing than the Metro, but people are doing it.
Speaker 4:And this was pretty straightforward to get here. It was yeah.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, like we haven't talked about it yet, but the wayfinding on the buses here is actually really good. On every bus we've gotten on, the digital screen shows you what stop you're coming up to next and like the next five after that, and it's been very accurate the whole time too. It's not like lagging really far behind or anything.
Speaker 4:Which I feel like at this point should be sort of a bare minimum for Metro buses. But it's totally not.
Speaker 2:Throughout the day. Anytime we have gone out of downtown and wanted to get somewhere else, we basically had to get back on the same bus and go downtown again before catching our next bus. This was the case when leaving the stadium and is pretty common in general, but I felt was worth pointing out. One other thing of note for the stadiums is the potential for a connection via some sort of future intercity rail between Austin and San Antonio. This was a point made by both Travis County and Bayer County judges who are advocating for that project. We will do a future episode on this, so if you are not subscribed on YouTube or following on your favorite podcast platform, please go ahead and do so. Anyway, to avoid getting too repetitive, I'm going to summarize a bit here.
Speaker 2:Our afternoon involved coming back into downtown to see San Antonio's biggest historical attraction, the Alamo. We walked around some of the free exhibits outside, but doing the full tour is definitely recommended if you have the time. At this point. We had one more major stop before meeting up with Strongtown, san Antonio, and then catching our Greyhound back to Austin. That stop was to head to Mission Concepcion. We found ourselves yet again running to catch the bus and getting on in a rush, which caused a minor issue.
Speaker 6:Bus, what Don't leave?
Speaker 4:us, oh no, oh no, it's stopping. Oh god, that's a scary bus.
Speaker 2:It may or may not.
Speaker 6:Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave.
Speaker 4:I got that entire run on camera.
Speaker 2:We may or may not be on the correct bus.
Speaker 4:That was my bad. I accept responsibility for getting us on the wrong bus.
Speaker 2:What's hilarious is we ran, we ran.
Speaker 4:We ran to get to that bus. We ran to catch this bus that we thought was two minutes early.
Speaker 2:Yes, but in reality it was exactly on time. The good news is it runs up this street right here. It runs parallel to the path we meant to take. Yeah, so Crisis averted, crisis averted, and you know we're just running for the drama. Got to keep this interesting right. You know who doesn't love running when it's 90-something degrees and humid out.
Speaker 4:I run for clicks.
Speaker 2:Run for clicks.
Speaker 4:Where is the bus stop?
Speaker 2:Over there.
Speaker 4:Oh, we need to be on the other side of the street.
Speaker 2:We do, and this street there's nowhere to cross. There's no crosswalk from that light all the way over there to that light here, so we're just gonna do it there should be a crosswalk here and like, uh, there should be a pedestrian hybrid beacon. Let me put my glasses on and push them up while I say that there should be a pedestrian hybrid beacon here to. Are you making fun of people who care about pedestrian safety? I'm making fun of myself. Yeah, I'm making fun for knowing the phrase pedestrian hybrid beacon. I didn't actually know that. You mean a PHB. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we need to request a PHB. We're just commenting on how this road is unnecessarily. It's a good candidate for a road diet. This is a four-lane road.
Speaker 4:There's not a whole lot of traffic at the moment.
Speaker 2:It's midday on a Friday, so I'd assume there would be more traffic Like this, with a center turning lane and bike lanes on the side, or turning these outside lanes into bus lanes, bus lanes.
Speaker 4:That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 2:Instead of bike lanes on this one, put bike lanes on the other road that runs parallel yeah Bus lanes here and a center turning lane and we're going to see a road later that. The Strongtowns folks actually did a road audit on yeah and we're going to meet them for dinner slash drinks there. So there are groups trying to work on that sort of thing here. Says the bus should be in two minutes. I think that's it. That's it. Look at that. No Phantom buses here in San Antonio.
Speaker 4:So we are now going to fix our mistake. We're gonna catch the 34, right, yes, we're gonna catch the 34 bus. We're gonna head down to one of the San Antonio missions, this one's Mission, concepcion. Take a look at it. I've never been super excited. Yeah, oh, puddle.
Speaker 2:Go for it, thank you. We got off the bus to find some more rough pedestrian infrastructure. A lot of San Antonio's roads have long stretches with no crosswalks, leaving pedestrians to play Frogger at their own risk. We had to do this several times throughout the day. There should definitely be. There's no crosswalks for like an insane amount. Oh, a Cybertruck.
Speaker 4:Crosswalks are definitely an afterthought or not?
Speaker 2:a thought at all. Not a thought at all. I mean it's not like there's not people living here, and I mean there's apartment complexes, people driving around in their Cybertrucks to run you over. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 4:They'll cut you in half. They'll cut you in half.
Speaker 2:Just like the have you seen the? Videos of people, the, putting carrots in the, and we made it to mission conception here, which was pleasantly way nicer than I think either of us expected is I've always heard about the missions.
Speaker 4:If you're going to see the alamo, you can see it, but make sure you come to the missions because, uh, it's very impressive.
Speaker 2:This is going to blow away in the wind. Instead of of showing the things on the map that Chris is struggling to show, we can probably show some of the shots from inside. Yeah, we will.
Speaker 4:But it's really impressive. Most of the missions were founded in 1731 by the Spanish, and that was really how they built an empire.
Speaker 2:And they're kind of all along the river here and we just learned that there's actually a bit of like a, a walk, a trail, yeah, that you would do to kind of connect them all and the national park service trail that you can take to see all of the missions and they're basing it kind of off of the the similar walk in spain.
Speaker 2:Um, blanking on the name of it off the top of my head, but we just had a nice conversation with somebody inside who explained some of that yeah, if you come out here, the pilgrimage center, the Pilgrimage Center at Mission Concepcion, the employees there are incredibly friendly. As we walked out the door I said it was the most friendly, enthusiastic people in any store that I've ever been inside of.
Speaker 4:They're great, absolutely great, so wonderful people come check it out, beautiful building as well, and really great grounds. But yeah, come see some history. This is how the Spanish built an empire. They shipped missionaries and soldiers together and built these missions and continue to expand their borders. So it's really interesting to see this piece of history in the Spanish Empire.
Speaker 2:And one last switch for my arm. So what's next, lewis? What is next is that we are going to hopefully redeem the bike share usage. There is a B-cycle bike share thing just out of sight over there in the sun, which is why we're not standing there right now, because we're melting or we would be melting. We're going to hop on the bikes and route up the road a little bit, but we can actually get on to part of the Riverwalk, which you are allowed to have bikes on through this section, and bike to the Blue Arts District, which is an area that was recommended to us first by Strong Towns San Antonio, but then also by the folks inside here at the Mission Concepcion. We're going to ride over there, check out that area and then we'll be meeting some of the Strong Towns folks at a restaurant close by.
Speaker 4:This is a much better experience than New Orleans.
Speaker 2:I was literally thinking the same thing. I would have already been over to New Orleans. I could do this for a while here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, this is so much better.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is some, this is some Greenway oriented development, if I've seen it. We just left a church and now here we are seeing some God.
Speaker 4:That was really nice, that was nice. Alright, b b-cycle, you've redeemed yourself.
Speaker 2:just need more of them, yeah after our lovely bike ride it was time to meet up with strong town san antonio. We chatted with folks for about two hours and included some of that mix throughout this episode. We may release some bonus content or do a separate episode in general in the future with some of the rest of that conversation, but unfortunately could not fit it all here. Big thanks again to everyone who came out and even gave us tips throughout the day. We will include links to more information about Strongtown San Antonio in the description. Wow, I look like shit. We've had a long day in San Antonio.
Speaker 2:So we just finished talking to the Strongtowns folks who were very lovely so lovely, in fact, that we talked for probably too long very lovely so lovely, in fact, that we talked for probably too long, and we had a great reception, yes, uh, and the next bus now, though, is too close, so we have to catch a b-cycle again, and we're barely gonna make the greyhound we're gonna make it yes, we'll make it all right.
Speaker 2:We hoofed it down, down on the bikes now because the b-cycle locations are not that convenient. We now have a nine minute walk, but at the rate that we walk it will be like a four and a half minute walk, our iced coffee walk, but we're definitely hustling a little bit. Yeah, and if we miss this bus, that's gonna be dramatic. If we miss this bus, there's not another one.
Speaker 4:It's like one o'clock in the morning we're gonna our great hand leaves at 7 15. Yep, it is uh 701 now. We'll arrive in austin by 8 40. Yep, it is 7.01 now We'll arrive in Austin by 8.40. About 8.40-ish 8.40.
Speaker 2:We do want to like extend a very special thank you to Strong Towns San Antonio. It was awesome to have eight people show up because they like wanted to talk to us.
Speaker 4:We were like oh, maybe two people will arrive. And eight people showed up.
Speaker 2:It's amazing, yeah, and to hear their perspectives about what it's like, you know, not just doing what we did, which is doing San Antonio in a day using only public transit, but like what it's like living here and using that as your method to get around all of the time, some of the time. It was awesome hearing from Tony who she lives car free.
Speaker 4:Yeah, completely car free.
Speaker 2:In downtown, but also hearing from folks like Jay and some of the others who live further out and who that's really not an opportunity at all for.
Speaker 4:So final thoughts, I think San Antonio surprised me with how quickly the buses came. They're always on time. Us getting around town and making last minute decisions actually worked out really well, Until the very end.
Speaker 2:I guess Until this, because the reason we did the on time us getting around town and making like last minute decisions actually worked out really well Until the very end. I guess Until this. Yeah, because the reason we did the B-cycle at the end was because the bus was a bit behind schedule. Although, is this the bus we were going to get? Probably I think it might have been. From my perspective, it's like are things perfect? No, but I think there's a lot of room for potential. There are people who care, who are trying to do what they can. It sounds like there is some political will.
Speaker 4:It sounds like the city government is actually being very receptive to ideas.
Speaker 2:Yep, so all of those things is a recipe for good things to come. Anyway, that's it here from San Antonio. If you enjoyed this and you haven't hit the like button already, please consider doing so. If you're not subscribed, please go ahead and do that. We're also going to have links to everything from Strongtown, san Antonio and some of the other places we were at today. But thank you all so much for watching. We hope you enjoyed this day. Sorry, the ending is very chaotic here but we are actually almost going to miss the bus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. See you on the next Transit Tensions Tuesday.