After conducting a nationwide search for a new CEO, San Antonio’s VIA Metropolitan Transit has opted to promote from within, selecting its own marketing head to lead the agency as it struggles with sagging ridership and prepares to break ground on its largest capital projects ever, a pair of rapid bus corridors costing a total of $755 million.
VIA’s board of trustees on Tuesday voted unanimously, with two members absent, to appoint Jon Gary Herrera as president and CEO starting on Jan. 4, after the departure of Jeffrey Arndt, who has served in the role since 2013.
Herrera, whose current title is senior vice president of public engagement, will be the first Latino CEO for the agency, which was created in 1978.
A San Antonio native and graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio, Herrera has been a longtime presence in civic and business circles, having been crowned Rey Feo at Fiesta in 2015. In the 1990s he worked for the city and also was a vice president of business development at the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. In the early 2000s he served as vice chair for the board of the San Antonio Housing Authority, now known as Opportunity Home San Antonio.
Before going to work for VIA in 2017, Herrera spent 17 years as the regional vice president of communications for Spectrum, then known as Time Warner Cable.
Herrera’s annual salary will be $350,000, VIA spokesperson Josh Baugh said in an email. Arndt’s current salary is $380,000.
Often serving as VIA’s spokesperson in media interviews, Herrera worked to help drum up support for many of the transformations Arndt introduced to the agency, including its VIA Link ride-hailing service, which recently expanded into downtown, and the planned Green Line and Silver Line — so-called “advanced rapid transit” corridors on which buses will arrive every 10 minutes on weekdays, offering a frequency of service which doesn’t currently exist in San Antonio.
Funded with a blend of local and federal dollars, the $466 million Green Line — running up San Pedro Avenue from south of downtown to the San Antonio International Airport — is expected to break ground this year.
The $289.2 million Silver Line, running east-west from Our Lady of the Lake University on the West Side to the Frost Bank Center on the East Side, is set to begin construction in 2027 after the Bexar County Commissioners Court voted in August to commit a crucial $100 million in funding.
The Green and Silver lines are part of a larger push by the agency to increase the frequency of its routes, under the thinking that riders are more likely to choose riding the bus over driving if the bus arrives often enough that they won’t have to worry about a long wait.
Under an effort known as the Better Bus Plan, VIA is seeking to offer an arrival frequency of at least 30 minutes on all its routes, with faster service on key corridors.
Like many other transit agencies in major Texas cities, VIA has struggled with declining ridership over the past decade — especially in the wake of the pandemic. From September 2022 to August 2023, VIA had a total ridership of 27 million, up 12.2 percent from the prior fiscal year but down nearly 25 percent from 35.9 million in fiscal year 2019, according to data from the Texas Department of Transportation.
Even before the pandemic, ridership was in decline, with the agency counting nearly 46.1 million riders in fiscal year 2013, according to TxDOT’s data.
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VIA Transit Stays In-House With Choice for CEO
Jon Gary Herrera, whose current title is senior vice president of public engagement, will be the first Latino CEO for the agency, which was created in 1978.
