Jon Gary Herrera, now 56, used to take a 45-minute bus ride to get home from Central Catholic High School.
“I took the McCullough [route] up to North Star Mall, then took the 648 [route],” Herrera told the San Antonio Report on Tuesday. “It wasn’t too bad. … There’s a personal story that, I bet you, many of us have in this community [about transit].”
Of course, at the time, he could not have known that one day he would be in charge of the buses that carry thousands of San Antonians every day to school, work, doctor’s appointments, the grocery store, parks and other critical or casual destinations.
VIA Metropolitan Transit’s board unanimously voted to appoint Herrera as the next president and CEO on Nov. 12. His first day — as the first Latino to lead the transit agency — will be Jan. 4.
Personal connection is what makes VIA unique, said current President and CEO Jeffery Arndt, who is retiring after 13 years at VIA and 40 years in the transportation industry.
“Nearly any leader you talk to here — Secretary [Henry] Cisneros, Secretary [Hope] Andrade — their origin story is all about how they grew up riding the bus,” Arndt said, citing the former secretaries of Housing and Urban Development and the state of Texas, respectively.
“That’s why I think this community really values VIA,” Arndt added, because it plays an integral role in so many people’s lives.
Despite those memories and strong connections, VIA has been the least-funded major transit agency in Texas for decades. Personal vehicles dominate the sprawling city, fueling a car-centered culture with an underlying skepticism of mass transit — especially rail, but even other modes of transit like bike lanes.
But in one of the most impoverished big cities in the U.S., it’s buses that allow tourism, retail and restaurant workers to keep San Antonio’s proverbial lights on. During recent community meetings regarding VIA’s new rapid transit corridors, several residents said they perceive buses as unsafe to ride because of the ridership.
“We understand most San Antonians don’t use our system. We get that part, but there’s a misnomer of who uses our system,” Herrera told the San Antonio Report in an October interview. At the time, his title was senior vice president of public engagement, a position he held since 2017.
“The number one reason, by far, the number one reason folks use our service is to get to their place of work,” he said. “That’s when community members start making the connection to … economic vitality and our economic engine of San Antonio.”
Herrera will take the helm at a critical moment in VIA’s 46-year history as it prepares to break ground on the biggest mass transit investments in San Antonio’s modern history: The north-south Green Line will be the city’s first “advanced rapid transit” route that promises to deliver faster, more frequent service similar to light rail.
A call to public service
After 18 years as regional vice president of communications at Spectrum, formerly Time Warner Cable, Herrera founded his own advertising agency, Lone Star Media, in 2015.
That same year, he was crowned Rey Feo LXVII (67) during Fiesta San Antonio. He has raised more than $450,000 for college scholarships through the Rey Feo Consejo Educational Foundation.
Two years later, he joined VIA as senior vice president of public engagement.
“I was at a stage in my career [when] public service was a big interest in life,” he said. The public engagement position at VIA was a chance to combine “my private sector experience [and] my desire to for service.”
Arndt, who announced his retirement in August, said Herrera’s professional and personal connections to the work and his “strong analytical mind” will be assets to VIA.
“[Herrera] has a tremendous number of relationships in the community, and that’s very valuable, especially when you’re in the field of public engagement, and will continue to be of value as CEO,” Arndt said. “[He] finds the value in the data and figures out what the data is telling us and what we should do as a result.
“… It’s the heart and the mind [working] together,” he added. “That’s what any organization really benefits most from, is that combination and that balance of heart and mind.”
That balance was put to the test in July, when the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 694, which represents more than 1,500 bus operators and maintenance personnel employed at VIA, demanded higher pay increases for workers.
The union asked for 40% in raises to catch up to the cost of living and inflation. Ultimately, they landed on incremental 4%, 3.5% and 3.5% raises over the next three years, according to VIA officials.
“It was a matter of time and communication,” Arndt said. “Ultimately, [VIA] staff came forward with recommendations to the board and the ATU supported those recommendations.”
A union representative could not be reached for comment.
Hererra’s three-year contract includes a salary of $350,000, according to VIA officials. Hererra’s contract will automatically renew after that each year, subject to board decisions. Arndt’s salary is $380,000. The president and CEO oversees the agency’s $307.6 million budget and about 2,000 employees.
Herrera credited Arndt for building up the agency’s services and performance over his tenure and pledged to build on that success.
“There’s going to be a number of goals that we’re going to roll out — or I’m going to roll out — but that’s going to sound very familiar, because it is indeed things that we’ve been talking about as not only a senior [leadership] team, but as an agency,” he said.
The multi-million-dollar investments the agency is poised to make in advanced rapid transit have to translate into ridership growth, he said. “That’s going to be a big component of what we’re going to be focused on … from that foundation of investment, turning that into ridership.”
Determined to get it right
Starting in 2026, VIA will receive an additional, voter-approved one-eighth-cent sales tax on top of the one-half-cent sales tax it currently collects. For decades, other Texas cities have applied the maximum 1-cent tax approved by the Texas Legislature in 1977.
The coronavirus pandemic temporarily derailed the original plan to divert that eighth cent to VIA in 2021, away from aquifer protection and greenway trail development. As the pandemic gutted local and national economies, officials — and ultimately voters — decided to fund Ready to Work, an education and workforce development program, for four years before shifting back to VIA.
Advanced rapid transit is at the center of VIA’s plan to improve mobility.
“It’s a critical component and moment for our agency, because we’ve never done it before — so [we’d] better get it right, because then our community is going to remember that,” Herrera said after the board’s vote to appoint him.
Delivering on the $446 million Green Line and subsequent Silver Line will be critical for the future of mass transit in San Antonio, he said. “If we stub our toe initially, it’s going to be hard to come back out and ask for it, for sure.”
VIA currently serves about 4,500 rides per day along San Pedro Avenue, Navarro Street, South St. Mary’s Street and Roosevelt Avenue route — from the airport in the north to the historic missions in the south — that will become the Green Line. The agency aims to nearly double that to 8,000 by 2028, just one year after it’s set to open.
Though advanced or bus rapid transit has its critics, Herrera is confident that VIA, the City of San Antonio and other partners can deliver on the broader sustainability and economic mobility goals of the transit-oriented development policy, slated for City Council vote later this year.
In addition to advanced rapid transit the agency will be adding more on-demand services, known as VIA Link, and increase the frequency of buses throughout its network.
“I’m honored to take the helm here, a helm that’s in great shape, that we can move forward,” Herrera told the VIA board during its November meeting.
“We’re in a very unique position as a governmental entity that we have to go earn our customers every day … we don’t have a built-in guarantee of that,” he said. “I look forward to continuing to lead this agency and appreciate the opportunity.”
