Monday Musings #48: Street Improvement Fatigue

As a District 1 resident, I am fatigued, as are many of my neighbors and fellow downtown workers, by the daily challenge of navigating urban street improvement projects that take years to complete. Completion of one project seems to signal the start of an equally disruptive one elsewhere in the district.

The $59 million South Alamo Street project that extends from Market Street to South Alamo Street along the west side of Hemisfair is scheduled to be completed in “Spring 2026,” a vague, seasonal prediction that leaves lots of room for determining an actual finish date. The project from the $850 million 2017-2022 bond has been underway since 2022. City officials had to scramble and spend nearly $1 million on a temporary paved lane on the street during the Final Four tournament last spring, which didn’t do much, in my opinion, to either alleviate traffic or project a positive image of the city for visitors.

Locals are still telling war stories about surviving the 2017 bond projects to improve Broadway and North St. Mary’s Street, which took far longer to complete than originally stated. My fear is that the future construction of a Spurs arena and other improvements along the southern and eastern sides of Hemisfair will result in street or lane closures along the I-37 southbound access road and César Chávez Boulevard between the Alamodome and South Alamo Street, causing more years of traffic congestion and delays.

Frustrated local bar and restaurant owners affected by the street projects formed a political action committee in 2024 in advance of the 2025 municipal elections to add strength to their voice at city hall. 

In fairness to city officials, San Antonio is a 300-year-old city. A lot of the poorly mapped underground labyrinth of utilities, water and wastewater systems in the inner city is antiquated and beyond repair. It has to be completely replaced while traffic still plies the affected surface streets.

Still, can the city do better, perhaps by doing things differently?

City Manager Erik Walsh addressed the issue earlier this month before an audience of 150 members of the Master Leadership Program of Greater San Antonio who gathered at the Alamo Colleges headquarters on North Alamo Street to hear Mayor Gina Jones, the nonprofit Texas 2036 Executive Vice President A.J. Rodriguez and Walsh discuss issues related to the city and region’s record population growth. I served as moderator.

The mayor canceled the day of the event, but Walsh made it clear that while he sympathized with our collective pain, the city cannot afford to slow down the pace of infrastructure improvements in the interest of reducing the daily inconvenience of living in one of the fastest-growing cities in the country.

I have been considering the wisdom of calling for a pause in the planned 2027-2032 bond cycle to give contractors more time to make up lost ground during the pandemic and complete the 2017-2022 and 2022-2027 bond cycles. The city’s dashboards report that about 20% of the 2017 projects remain unfinished, with 80% of the $1.2 billion 2022 bond project yet to be completed. Why take on even more work when the present workload seems overwhelming?

Walsh said the 2022 bond project completion rate is on track. That struck me as optimistic, with two years remaining on the cycle. He also said any pause in the bond cycle would make things worse rather than better. A May 2027 bond election seems to remain the target date for voters to weigh in on the next planned cycle. We will know more by then.

Reduced real estate values and tax collections mean the size of the next bond will shrink back to 2017 levels unless City Council raises taxes for the first time in 20-plus years. A bond cycle reduced by as much as one-third will cause San Antonio to fall farther behind in chipping away at the city’s estimate of $6.6 billion in needed infrastructure improvements citywide. A total of $2.8 billion in projects have been identified for consideration in the next cycle, which will have to be reduced to $850 million if nothing changes. 

What Walsh does have the power to change is the performance of the city’s Public Works Department, which I give failing grades to for its past pattern of poor communication with the public and the media. Longtime Public Works Director Razi Hosseini retired, or was retired–we do not really know–last September as the director of the Public Works Department after 33 years with the city. 

The department’s new director is a familiar figure. Art Reinhardt comes to the job after serving in the same role for Bexar County for the last two years, after a stint in the private sector. He worked for the City of San Antonio’s Transportation & Capital Improvements Department from 2013 to 2020, including roles as assistant director and interim deputy director, before the department was renamed and, if memory serves, Hosseini took the helm.

Reinhardt is more outgoing than Hosseini and will be more comfortable with the public-facing responsibilities that come with the job, in my opinion, but a broader shift at City Hall will be required. I’d suggest it will require a tougher hand by Reinhardt and his team in their oversight of private contractors doing the actual street-level work. That change will have to be embraced by Walsh, Mayor Jones and City Council.

I spent some time perfecting my opposite side of the road driving in the UK this past summer. One striking memory stems from passing by and through various street improvement projects in both English and Scottish towns and cities. Easy-to-read signage was posted at both ends of the street projects that stated the start and completion dates. Do authorities there live up to their posted promises? I can’t say, but the emphasis on visible communications and accountability with the locals most affected, as well as we passers-by, impressed me.

Can we see such public promises in San Antonio, and count on public servants and private contractors to meet their stated deadlines? It's a question worth asking before we move into yet another five-year cycle when the last one is still well underway.