What if? Part 2: Transportation
September 21, 2023 · Jonathan R. Card
This is the second part of our series about emerging opportunities in downtown San Antonio. Read the first part here.
It seems our downtown is poised for significant transformation. Big things are happening — we have sports teams and UTSA planning expansions, and the energy is real. More could change in the next three decades than in the last 300 years. It’s an opportunity that might not knock again soon, and it begs the question, where do we start?
We’ll start the conversation regarding two improved public amenities: a public parking utility and a fixed urban transportation loop.
public parking utility
What if city, state, and federal resources were deployed to provide a public parking utility? Surface lots would be transformed into precast concrete parking garages equally spaced throughout the core, eliminating the burden for developers to provide parking for any new development. Urban street fronts and retail would benefit from less missing teeth and more uniformity and rhythm. We imagine a parking utility on the east side similar to Discovery Green or Millenium Park. We missed an opportunity to provide a similar amenity in the heart of our tourist center when our new Civic Park proceeded without subterranean parking.
Chicago’s Maggie Daley Park built over concealed parking (via Maggie Daley Park)
The surface lots adjacent to the Alamodome could be converted from roughly 2,500 sporadically used surface spaces to 5-7,000 predictably available covered spaces for all downtown guests. There would be no need to dig at the Alamodome. Building up would be cost effective and start to encase the Union Pacific line that bisects the site. The new spaces proposed here would free up 1-1.5 million square feet of surface lots. Developed at an average height of 8 stories, this could allow for 10 million square feet of new development in the urban core.
Ideally this parking utility would be spread throughout downtown, but starting on the publicly owned Alamodome surface lot is a catalytic concept that could be accomplished quickly. As the city matures and other viable forms of personal transportation evolve, these garages could be disassembled and replaced with even more useful development.
transportation Loop
Card and Company proposal for the UTSA Downtown Campus - Alamodome Urban Loop
What if a state-of-the-art fixed transportation route linked UTSA on the west and Hemisfair Plaza and the Alamodome on the east? Rather than the traditional east-west couplet utilizing Commerce and Market, we propose a two way system utilizing Commerce, Frio, Cesar Chavez, and Cherry. With transit nodes equally spaced along the route, most of the Central Business District would be within a 5-minute stroll of the new transit line. Visitors would learn to find their favorite garage along the route or be directed to thousands of spaces on the east side.
Guangzhou, China autonomous bus (via Mobility Innovators)
The Robert Thompson Transit Station on the east side would be connected to Centro Plaza on the west and to destinations beyond by way of via, Amtrak. and other multi-modal options VIA is planning. This fixed urban transportation loop connects historic, civic, government, cultural, academic, and retail destinations. Individualistic modes of transportation will eventually make way for high-quality, multi-modal options like self-driving taxis, rideshares, buses, trains, and trams. By then I might be ready to take a ride from a vertiport at Hemisfair to a meeting at Port San Antonio.
A commitment to a fixed transportation loop and a public parking utility are the first steps of infrastructure we should consider as we plan Downtown San Antonio’s future.
Did someone say multi-modal?
