About This Site
At Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown, which is the blog for our Facebook page of the same name, we support policies, services and facilities that make it easier and safer to bike, walk, transit and use streets for people.
Why?
Our historic downtown is built out. We can’t comfortably fit more cars, nor have every individual driving to get from place to place. If more people walk, bike, scooter and take transit it makes our little historic streets more efficient. It is friendly to our environment and helps combat climate change. It makes us healthier. More equitable. And happier too. Very importantly research shows it helps local Mom n Pop businesses prosper.
We can learn from others and hope to share best practices of making this happen from around the world. We want to shine a light on positive local efforts and call out areas where we need to improve. We want to make our little island paradise better. It’s that simple.
Like us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook. Follow at ChrisRHamilton on Twitter. Visit our Favorite Sites on the right hand side of the pages on this site. And check out our Key West Voices page for other local writers and news outlets we like. The meat of the site is our Blog page, the contents of which is also on the right side of each page. Since 2021 our blog posts have been cross posted under the column banner “Streets for People” in the local KONK Life newspaper too. It may be quicker to scroll through the list of stories on our KONK page. Contact us and we’ll share your ideas and stories. Let’s make a better Key West together.
Chris
About Chris Hamilton
This site reflects my passion is to help unlock the potential of cities, especially my home here in Key West, for becoming more happy, prosperous, healthy, equitable and green places by unleashing the power of walking, biking and transit. I’ve been lucky to have done that in a few places.
As Commuter Services Bureau Chief of Arlington’s, DOT (1993 thru 2015), I helped build and lead the largest, most innovative TDM/mobility management team in North America, whose mission is to make it easy for people to take transit, bike, and walk rather than drive alone. Over the last 25+ years I’ve helped pioneer the use of Commuter Stores, online fare purchases, innovative marketing, B2B solutions, walk and bike encouragement, the east coast’s first on-street carshare, TDM for Site Plan Development, impactful research through our Mobility Lab and the USA’s first major bikeshare program. Research says there’s a host of benefits and analysis concludes these programs remove 42,000 SOV trips daily. This maximizes smart-growth policies and investment in transportation infrastructure. The result? While adding 46,000 residents and 38,000 jobs over the last two decades, traffic on Arlington’s streets (as measured on arterials) has dropped in most cases. The result is Arlington’s tax base, business climate and quality of life are the envy of cities worldwide.
Cities around the globe are doing similar good work. The goal here on this site and on our Friends of Car-Free Key West Facebook page and my ChrisRHamilton Twitter page is to share that knowledge and encourage others to try.
I’m a native of Washington, D.C. where I had Washington Football Team NFL season tickets for 35 years and Washington Nationals for 10 year before I left. I’ve lived in Key West, Florida since 2015 where I work for and volunteer for some non-profits. As I only work part-time, I’m open to the possibility of using my skills to help a select few others. Check out my Resume page and let me know if you’d like to chat.
CONTACT: chris hamilton 170 @ gmail .com