When District 4 City Councilman Rey Saldaña rode the bus one spring day and posted a photo of his trip online, one of his constituents was unimpressed.

“Someone said, ‘It’s cute you’re riding it one day, but people in your district ride it every day because that’s their only form of transportation,’” he said. “He challenged me to get a genuine experience and ride the bus for an entire month.”

So in June, Saldaña traveled only by bus and saw firsthand that slow and infrequent service made for hours of travel time.

The experience inspired his proposal to boost VIA Metropolitan Transit’s funding by giving it the city’s annual share of Advanced Transportation District tax revenue, which comes from a quarter-cent sales tax that helps fund transportation projects in Bexar County.

The City Council will begin discussing the idea this month.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize there’s a lot of work we need to do,” Saldaña said. “The bus system is severely underserving the folks who are using it today.”

Approved by voters in 2004, the ATD tax has generated nearly $500 million for transit improvements, traffic safety installations, and highway expansions and maintenance since collection began. Half the revenue is allocated to VIA, and the other half is split between the city and the Texas Department of Transportation.

The tax provides only a fraction of the revenue the city and TxDOT can use to fund transportation projects. But it’s a substantial revenue source for VIA, which is funded mainly by a half-cent Metropolitan Transit Authority tax approved when VIA was established in 1977.

This year, VIA expects to collect about $31 million in ATD revenue and $137 million in MTA revenue. Bus fares cover less than 15 percent of the agency’s operating costs, and ridership has been declining for years. VIA’s regular service had 43.1 million riders last year, down from 44.2 million in 2013 and 46.1 million in 2012.

The half-cent MTA sales tax is low when compared with that collected for transit systems in some of the state’s other major metro areas. Austin and Dallas both collect a 1-cent tax to fund transit systems that cover smaller areas than VIA’s service region, which covers more than 1,200 square miles.

“I lay none of the blame (for service problems) on VIA’s CEO or the board members,” Saldaña said. “The problem is, we underfunded the system when we first started it in 1977.”

Jeff Arndt, VIA’s president and CEO, said the relatively small amount of funding the agency receives to serve a large region affects how often buses can run, something that Saldaña noticed was a major problem for many riders.

“It costs more to send your service further and further out,” Arndt said. “Much of our service frequency is based on (the money) we have available.”

In recent years, VIA has used its ATD funds to add express bus routes and establish its Primo service, a more frequent bus line that runs from downtown to the Medical Center Transit Center. If the agency were to get a larger cut of ATD revenue, it could expand its Primo service and boost the frequency of regular service, Arndt said.

“Frequency of service is one detraction from making the service as attractive as possible to as many people as possible,” he said.

District 9 Councilman Joe Krier said he thinks that Saldaña’s idea deserves careful consideration but that he wants the council to examine how the transfer would affect city funding before approving it. In its 2016 budget, the city allocated about $17 million in ATD funds to build new sidewalks, add bike lanes and improve intersections.

“Anytime we tinker with how funds are spent that were authorized by voters, we have to make sure that we’re shifting (the funds) in a way they approve of,” he said.

Saldaña has asked city staff to draft a proposal that the council can discuss at a B session Oct. 21. He said he hopes the idea will come to a vote before December but that he doesn’t want to rush the process.

kblunt@express-news.net