VIA Metropolitan Transit

29°26′34″N 98°29′58″W / 29.44278°N 98.49944°W / 29.44278; -98.49944

VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority (referred to as VIA Metro or simply VIA) is the mass transit agency serving San Antonio, Texas, United States, and its surrounding municipalities. It began operation in 1978 as a successor to the San Antonio Transit System. In 2025, the system had a ridership of 30,665,700, or about 101,000 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2025.

In addition to the city of San Antonio, VIA serves many other Bexar County municipalities, including Alamo Heights, Balcones Heights, Castle Hills, Converse, Kirby, Leon Valley, Olmos Park, Shavano Park, and Terrell Hills. While VIA does not directly serve some Bexar County municipalities such as Hill Country Village, Hollywood Park, Live Oak, Selma, Schertz, Universal City and Windcrest, many of them are within driving proximity of outlying park-and-ride facilities.

VIA was created in 1977 when the citizens of Bexar County voted in favor of a one-half cent sales tax to fund the service. Subsequently, VIA purchased transit assets from the City of San Antonio and began operations in March 1978, taking its name from the Latin word for "road". In 2004, city voters in San Antonio approved the formation of the Advanced Transportation District. This quarter-cent sales tax expanded and improved VIA operations.

VIA has received several accolades from the American Public Transportation Association, most notably the award for Best Transit System in North America in 1990, as well as several of APTA's safety awards in multiple years.

VIA added a limited-stop bus service known as Prímo to the Fredericksburg Road corridor on December 17, 2012. Designated as Route 100, it connects the South Texas Medical Center to Downtown San Antonio. The route had connected the main campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio to its downtown campus using an extension from the Medical Center to the UTSA Main Campus, as well as a second extension that ran from the Medical Center to the nearby independent city of Leon Valley until January 2017 (when the extensions were split into Route 101 which later became Route 501 in January 2019). An expansion of Prímo to Zarzamora Street opened in January 2019 and an expansion to Military Drive opened in late August 2019, additionally VIA is looking into other corridors to which to add improved bus transit in the coming decades.

In March 2020, fares on all VIA services were temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fare suspension was set to last until April 1, 2020, but was later extended until the end of May 2020. On April 6, 2020, VIA implemented temporary service changes, including temporarily suspending some routes, implementing capacity limits on buses, and changing their fleet to Saturday service hours. On April 27, 2020, VIA implemented further temporary service changes, including suspending additional routes and further decreasing frequency. Fare collection continued on June 1, 2020, and capacity limits were later removed on June 1, 2021.

VIA operates over 500 wheelchair accessible buses on 75 bus routes, serving the entire city of San Antonio and most of Bexar County. About 36 million trips are made on VIA every year. The bus routes are separated into Frequent, and Standard Service types. VIA additionally provides special event service from its Park & Ride locations to events such as San Antonio Spurs basketball games at the Frost Bank Center, selected annual Fiesta San Antonio activities, and the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. VIA also offers "VIAtrans" paratransit services for disabled travelers.