Streets for People / A New Transit Service Is Coming This Summer. Our Workforce Needs It and Much More Transit Up and Down the Keys

We’ve all heard some version of a now familiar lament about how our workers can no longer afford to live on the island of Key West and have no other option but to get in a car and drive into town and then find a parking space for work. The additional employees on U.S. Route 1, along with the increasing number of visitors driving here clogs our roads and make everyone unhappy. It also sparks competition and annoyance between downtown residents, visitors and workers for scarce parking.

Employees tell us they have no other option than to drive. And given the infrequent nature of current transit options, they’re right. A little help is on the way later this summer in the form of a new County 5-vehicle on-demand micro-transit service rolling out on Stock Island and Key West called “Conch Connect.” But we need to do a whole lot more if we expect to really meet the needs of our increasingly beleaguered workforce and give them a trustworthy and viable option to driving. And we need the County and City to work together. Let’s explore what’s happing…

More of Us Live Up the Keys So More of Us Drive to Get to Work

According to historical trends provided by the Key West Chamber, while the population of Key West has remained relatively stable over the last 40 or so years going from 24,382 in 1980 to 26,444 in 2020, the County’s population continues to increase every decade from 63,188 in 1980 to 82,873 in 2020. We’ve written about how (here and here) in the 1970’s and 80’s people have anecdotally shared that back then things were simpler, more people lived on the island, and they walked and biked to work. That’s very different from today where, after housing, traffic congestion has remained a top concern and data shows tens of thousands of cars arrive on our little island every week.

While we weren’t able to get more recent data, according to the 2019 Key West Transit Development Plan, in 2015 one third (1/3) of those working on the island commuted into Key West from Stock Island and beyond. And interestingly, one third (1/3) of employed Key West residents commuted off island for work too. We think most folks would agree that in the nine years since that data point that even more people are commuting in to Key West from points beyond the island and vice versa (witness the new hotels) as we’ve talked about over 800 new housing units constructed or in the pipeline on Stock Island and the Lower Keys in just the past few years.

There’s a Reason Nobody Commutes By Bus – Lack of Service

The City’s Lower Keys Shuttle bus between Marathon and downtown Key West is anticipated to provide more than 100,000 rides for the first time since 2019 before the pandemic. That’s good news. But according to the U.S. Census only one half of one percent (0.5%) of Monroe County residents use public transit to get to work. So, in reality that number isn’t good news it’s touted to be because it’s such a small drop in the bucket. And there’s a reason that anybody with access to a vehicle doesn’t commute by bus. A lack of frequent service at convenient hours.

The Lower Keys Shuttle has just 10 trips from Marathon to Key West per day and 10 trips back. There’s approximately 90 to 120 minutes between trips and the last bus leaves Key West outbound before 8 pm. The new Workforce Express that debuted last June and goes from Stock Island to downtown via a straight shot along Flagler and N. Roosevelt only has four inbound trips a day in the morning and four back in the late afternoon. FOUR. With such infrequent service no one can really depend upon taking the bus for work, let alone shopping and play. And as the data shows, the result is, nobody does.

Until the frequency on the Lower Keys Shuttle and Work Force Express increases to every 30 minutes or better and the span of service goes until late at night, if not 24 hours, workers won’t be lured from their cars, no matter the hassles with traffic and parking.

More Frequent Transit Can Help Workers Overall Affordability

Providing workers with a frequent, reliable and trustworthy option to get to work besides driving isn’t just about helping with road congestion and downtown parking problems. Owning, operating and insuring a car is expensive. In fact, AAA says in Florida the average sits above $11,000 annually. While our agreed upon number one issue is affordable housing, when you realize that every adult in the Lower Keys needs a car to get anywhere, adding the cost of getting around to housing just makes life’s overall affordability all the worse.

What if each adult in a family could instead rely on a frequent and easy-to-use transit system to get to work and some of life’s other activities? Perhaps that family could go car-lite and get rid of one car, saving thousands of dollars every year. Imagine if they could go car-free? And the connection between transit, housing and overall affordability is another reason why perhaps the TDC could use some funds to assist the County and the City on transit.

New County “Conch Connect” Freebee Micro-Transit Service Is a Hopeful Start

Richard Clark, who is almost two years into his position as the County’s Executive Director of Transit told us this week that to get something started and begin to relieve pressure on Key West Transit that:

“We have awarded an on-demand, micro-transit service contract to Freebee. The service will be branded as “Conch Connect”.  This service will start in July and will cost $2 per trip. The service area is Stock Island – Key West. It is a curb to curb service. You will begin to see marketing efforts in the coming weeks.”

He further explained that Conch Connect will start with five electric Tesla vehicles, one of which will be ADA accessible with each accommodating up to four passengers. They will be wrapped and branded so people recognize them too. And did we mention the marketing? We appreciate the County recognizes what the City doesn’t regarding the need to brand the new vehicles and market them, because we’re still verklempt the City refuses to brand the Duval Loop buses or any of their other services, nor do any marketing or market the service.

Freebee is already operating a similar service for the Village of Islamorada. It will work similarly to the Key West Rides on-demand transit service, or like an Uber. But the Conch Connect and Key West Rides systems are not interoperable, so you’ll have to choose to use one or the other system. The exact hours of the service and how people will pay is still being fleshed out.

Why Would the County Operate a Similar Service to Key West Transit?

So, if you are following along, the natural question is why would the County start a service that is just like the City’s Key West Rides on-demand service?

Mr. Clark explains that the County has long-range plans for transit throughout the Keys, but they’ve got to start somewhere, and Stock Island and Key West are underserved, and this is a simple program that they can begin right away with minimal effort and capital start-up. He hopes people, especially on Stock Island, will use these more appropriately sized vehicles and that will lessen the need for Key West Transit to use its bigger vehicles for on-demand service between Stock Island and Key West. Maybe Key West Transit could even end the Rides on-demand service on Stock Island. As more people choose Conch Connect, Key West Transit could then switch buses now serving on-demand customers and potentially add service to the Workforce Express and even the Lower Keys Shuttle where it makes way more sense to use the larger vehicles. But it sounds like Key West Transit is hesitant, at least at the moment, to doing anything differently without further analysis.

Key West Transit’s Response to the New Conch Connect Service

Initially we asked Key West Transit for their thoughts on the Work Force Express and Lower Keys Shuttle’s future. As we found out about the County’s plans for a new service beginning in July we followed up and asked how the County’s new service may affect their services and if this was indeed an opportunity to redeploy buses from on-demand to the regular routes. Here’s Rod Delostrinos’ Key West Transit Director’s reply:

“As I am not sure of the length or scope of work of the county’s contract with Freebee, implementing a service change to the Lower Keys Shuttle or any of our services based on an entity I do not have operational oversight could cause service issues. There is a deliberate process when making major service changes requiring analysis to avoid disparate impact and disproportionate burden. That being said I am excited to see how the County could assist in mitigating transportation issues.

The City of Key West is committed to improving our Transit services. For the past year, we have been analyzing the Work Force Express and hope to adjust this service to be more responsive to the public.  We hope the changes will migrate more workers to this route and help rebalance the on-demand service.”

Mr. Delostrinos goes on to say:

“Preliminary reports from FDOT state that the Key West Intermodal Center feasibility study will conclude in about 30 days.  A favorable recommendation is the key to moving forward with seeking funding for the design and construction.”

The proposed, and talked about for decades Intermodal Center, complete with parking garage on Stock Island, could be a game changer. Especially for downtown traffic congestion and parking woes, if visitors can indeed be convinced to leave their cars and the ferreted downtown from there.

It is good to hear the City is looking into improvements on the Work Force Express and analyzing FDOT’s Intermodal Center feasibility study. They are also in the middle of updating their Transit Development Plan (long-range plan) last updated in 2019.

Other Investments – Bus Stops Along Lower Keys Shuttle

City officials tell us they are in the final stages of completing a two-year, mostly grant-funded construction project to upgrade all the bus stops along the Lower Keys Shuttle route. Each stop has or is in the process of getting new bike racks or lockers so people can get to the stops along the Overseas Highway more easily, lights, trash and recycle bins, and map and schedule information. They are even installing 17 bike fix-it stations to help the bike-to-transit connection.

Future County Investments – More On-Demand and Maybe Ferry Service?

The County’s Executive Director of Transit tells us:

“We have applied to U.S. DOT for a grant to acquire 30 fully electric 13+-passenger Ford Transit Vans (5 of which will be wheelchair accessible). This includes 30 low speed chargers and 10 high speed chargers. If/when awarded, the service would be on-demand and run in local/geographic areas throughout all of the keys. Essentially, local service that operates as on-demand. Again, $2 per trip.

I am also working on a Ferry Planning Grant for inter-island service running from Key West, Marathon, Islamorada and Key Largo. This is the first step to see how feasible walk-on, passenger ferry service would be.”

He also mentioned that these Ford vans and the Tesla sedans they’ll be starting with on Stock Island are small enough that they don’t require a CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) and so make it easier to find drivers.

Eventually 30-Minute Service On the Overseas Highway

Richard Clark says he’d eventually like to get to a seamless, homogeneous transit system where you know you are in Monroe County from the branding of all of the different size vehicles on down to the bus stops. He shares this video to demonstrate that vision.

He says that today, on a given day, between Key West Transit’s Lower Keys Shuttle between Key West and Marathon and the Miami-Dade Route 301 Monroe Express between Florida City and Marathon there could be seven to nine buses. He says to serve this corridor on 30-minute frequency, which they’d like to do, he’d need at least 22 buses every day and preferably 30 for spares and breakdowns.

The Future Should See One Seamless Transit System for the Keys

Given Mr. Clark’s vision we’d imagine eventually seeing big commuter buses serving the length of the Overseas Highway with 30 minute mainline service supplemented by on-demand Freebee vans in the communities along the highway, including Key West,  for short trips. Perhaps extra vans between the Lower Keys, especially Stock Island and Key West on simple straight shot routes to provide workforce service in-between those 30-minute intervals. And then of course the Duval Loop to whisk visitors and workers around downtown. At that point we may see a whole new family of Conch Connect transit services operated by a joint County/City transit authority or something like that. All coordinated and branded and marketed as one easy to use system that gives people real, viable options to having to drive a car. That’s what we should strive for. And that’s why City and County leaders need to get creative on funding improvements, perhaps with TDC money thrown in.

Business Leader Paul J. Menta On How To Get There

We reached out to Paul J. Menta, owner of Key West Legal Rum and Distillery and leader of the influential Shop Mom & Pop Key West (website and Facebook Business Group) because his thoughtful and collaborative takes on issues has the ear of City and County leaders. Paul agreed on the need for more and better transit and outlined a process for getting there. He said:

“A better bus system for the workforce is a perk that the City and the County can offer to its residents to get to work and make their job easier. With high rents, transportation becomes an issue. With more traffic building up, this is a huge bonus to workers and to businesses because we can get them from their home to their place of work without adding any stress for them, which makes their job easier and makes their quality of life better and I don’t think that’s being accomplished here at all.

I commend having a workforce bus system. The schedule times are a bit spread out and the drop off points are pretty off of some main business areas. For example, if I take the bus from Stock Island and I work on lower Duval, I do have to walk a fair amount to get there, especially if there’s weather or at the end of the day and it’s really hot or in the evening. Also understand that Stock Island has a lot of work places and so does Big Coppitt and areas above there as well.

By talking to the businesses all over town and potentially doing a survey of them and the workers one could find the big concentrations people need to get to. You also need to talk to the people that are taking the workforce buses and ask how they feel about it where they would like to go if there are any adjustments.

I think as we are going to have a new mayor and commissioners, there is going to be a need for a lot of communication as a lot of new people will be working on stuff and if the City, the community and the business community are all talking in the same place instead of only on Facebook, but at the City, we can really fine-tune this and turn it into something. That’ll be extremely useful and help ease the burden for employees to get around the island and get to their jobs and make businesses prosper. I look forward to all of us working together to make this positive and not sitting on Facebook and saying what’s wrong but actually getting together and coming up with solutions and making things work. All the way around that is going to be the key to make this type of thing work.”

Amen Paul! Amen.

Let’s Encourage the County and City to Work Together to Get Stuff Done

It is good news the County is beginning to get involved in transit and this is a nice little start. The City/Key West Transit and County need to work together on funding and building better transit options because our residents and workers increasingly live and work in more spread out places that cross jurisdictional lines. Our workers in particular need easy and reliable options to the high costs of owning and operating a vehicle, especially because our rent is so high.

The vision of a future that includes a seamless, frequent, easy-to-understand and well-coordinated transit system throughout the entire County is the right one. And Paul’s absolutely right. We need everyone talking together in a positive collaboration. Accomplishing this will help ease our workforce’s burden, take cars off our congested main road, reduce parking conflicts downtown, help clean our environment, assist our local Mom & Pop Shops be more prosperous and make our island chain paradise healthier and happier too.

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Chris Hamilton is founder of the local advocacy group Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown. Subscribe to the blog. Follow on Facebook and Twitter. Support ($) its local journalism here. A native of the District of Columbia, where for a couple decades+ he led nationally renowned efforts promoting transit, bike, walk and smart growth for Arlington County, VA’s DOT. Chris has lived in Key West since 2015. He lives car-free downtown and works and volunteers for a few non-profits. You can find three years’ worth of KONK Life Streets for People column articles here and here.

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