On Wednesday, the hottest day San Antonio has had in 11 years, Gloria Escamilla and Annette Lopez waited at an unshaded bus stop — No. 76453 — on West Commerce Street.
It was 11 a.m. and already 95 degrees outside, but it felt hotter because they live on the West Side, located within San Antonio’s urban heat island — where it typically feels more than 8 degrees hotter than other parts of town.
Heat radiated from the large parking lot that surrounded them. They had been waiting for just over five minutes and Lopez was red and sweating.
Escamilla, who suffers from seizures and strokes, sat in a power chair as Lopez held an umbrella over her head. She said she couldn’t sit on the wooden bench because it was too hot.
“Sometimes the buses don’t even come, they’re delayed and we’re just standing there, just heat hitting us,” Lopez said.
They prefer to stay inside when it’s too hot outside. Lopez said they’ve canceled doctor appointments because it’s too hot to wait for a bus. But they left the house on Wednesday during the excessive heat warning because they planned to buy groceries after a doctor’s appointment.
Lopez recalled a dangerous experience this summer when a bus arrived nearly 30 minutes after it was scheduled to arrive. “She had a minor stroke that day,” Lopez said of Escamilla.
Like thousands more who rely on VIA Metropolitan Transit for transportation across the city, San Antonio VIA passengers sometimes have no choice but to wait at unshaded bus stops in San Antonio’s scorching hot temperatures.
$1 million for bus shade structures
VIA Metropolitan Transit’s records show that of its 6,000 bus stops, only a third have shaded structures to protect riders from the heat.
VIA told the San Antonio Report that it has 2,300 shaded bus stops across its service area. Many of the 3,700 unshaded bus stops are located in areas of low equity and high urban heat index maps from the city.
VIA says 15 shade structures were added to bus stops across the city last year, and another 10 are in design awaiting construction. Many of the new shade structures are in Northside neighborhoods.
As San Antonio progressively experiences intense heat, the city is taking a closer look, and “for the first time ever” is proposing allocating $1 million from a $14.6 million Resiliency, Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Program to add shaded structures at bus stops, City Manager Erik Walsh said at the Aug. 15 City Council meeting.
“Probably for the first time ever, we are allocating money out of this program to improve and expand, and potentially include bus shade structures,” said Walsh. “I drive by them just like you do, and in a lot of places, there’s not a lot of shade, so what are we doing to improve that for those individuals that are using the transit system?”
The shaded bus stops the city wants to fund are reduction measures recommended by researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Communities from South to East San Antonio have said they want to see more shaded bus stops at heat mitigation community meetings hosted by the city’s Office of Sustainability.
The city said it will evaluate ridership, bus stops and routes within the top 10 hottest census tracts and heat equity locations identified by heat equity research from UTSA to determine where to put the shade structures.
VIA told the San Antonio Report that shelter structure styles cost between $5,000 and $10,000 each and that a concrete foundation and accessible connection costs $6,000 or more, depending on the conditions of where it will be placed, not including costs for labor, design, procure and installation.
As Bexar County commissioners on Tuesday discussed approving VIA’s Silver Line, Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody told VIA CEO Jeffrey Arndt that heat was an issue for passengers in Bexar County.
“We talked about frequency and getting from 30 minutes, 20 minutes, to 10 minutes, but shoot, you’re going to have to have a bus every minute to keep me from sweating at the bus stop in August in San Antonio, Texas,” he said.
“It’s a challenge having to work around that just because of the heat and the lack of desire for folks to sit out there and wait for a bus regardless of frequency. Obviously it will make it easier to deal with 10 minutes instead of 30 minutes, but I think it’s still going to be a challenge,” he said.
Lopez and Escamilla said they wait at a bus stop about 20 minutes on average, which they say can feel longer in excessive heat.
As VIA plans for the future, spokesman Josh Baugh said VIA considers heat vulnerability. People have asked VIA during public input sessions to implement shaded structures in new projects. Baugh said the planned VIA Rapid stations will be shaded.
Squinting her eyes from the beaming sun as she sweated, Lopez pointed to another unshaded bus stop across West Commerce Street.
“All this, going down, I wish they all had shelters and a little A/C or something … especially in this heat.”
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