Streets for People / New Staples Avenue Bike/Ped Bridge Coming This Fall

Posted on June 23, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. Story is cross posted at KONK Life on June 23, 2023. Support ($) our local journalism here. Follow us at  Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook.

As the Salt Run Channel and extension of the Riviera canal crosses the middle of the island in New Town, it leaves only three places cars can get across or up and down the island. N. Roosevelt Boulevard, Flagler Avenue and South Roosevelt Boulevard. But bicycles and pedestrians have a fourth and safer option to cut across the City. The Staples Avenue Bike and Pedestrian Bridge. It’s a key segment in the Crosstown Greenway bike trail, with over 7,000 people crossing it each week.

Three years ago, alerted by Tom “The Bike Man” Theisen who had been canoeing under it and took a bunch of pictures of rotting metal, we did a story asking the question, “Is The Staples Avenue Bike Bridge Safe?” The City’s Engineering Department said the bridge was structurally sound for non-motorized traffic but was nearing the end of its useful life. So, with planning and engineering now complete, the City expects construction bids to come in during the first week of July. Once a contract is in place at the end of the summer, a grand re-opening should take place before Christmas.

Best of all the new bridge will be wider. At 15 feet the replacement structure will accommodate two-way bicycle traffic and a separated pedestrian walkway. No more pesky bollards in the middle to crash into. No more bikes vs. pedestrian incidents. Easier to cross. Safer for everyone. Kudos to the City. When we make it safer and easier for more people to bicycle, we all win. Let’s look at the history of the bridge and some other projects of the time, check out the details of the new and improved span and look at what’s happening today along the Crosstown Greenway.

Days of Yore: 25 Years Ago, Creation of the Locals Secret Bridge Leads to Today’s Crosstown Greenway

The Staples Avenue Bridge dates back to the late 1990’s. Here’s how Tom “The Bike Man” Theisen remembers it:

“I think the bridge was installed about 25 years ago. There was a very contentious community and commission meeting preceding it with many young kids in the audience. (How can you vote against a bunch of young kids?) The residents were worried about scooter traffic, so bike traffic was routed onto the sidewalks instead of being a straight run like the city engineer recommended and bollards were installed on the bridge. The biking community wanted a straight approach but was tired of fighting the neighbors at that point.”

During that same period, Tom and then Bicycle Coordinator Jim Malcom initiated a few projects including the bike/ped only path from 12^th Street to Kennedy Street along the edge of the Housing Authority’s property and a path through the parking lots at the Wickers Sports Complex, that along with the Staples Avenue Bridge created a safe “Locals” bikeway through the middle of the island so people didn’t need to use the speedy, unsafe and heavily car-trafficked  Flagler Avenue or N. Roosevelt Boulevard. The path is now officially known as the Crosstown Greenway.

With the adoption of a comprehensive Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan in 2019, the City has embarked on investing in improving the Crosstown Greenway. We’ve done stories on it here and here and here. Those improvements include an upcoming multi-million dollar project to construct a safer and separated path through the Wickers Sports Complex and construction just started on putting in brand new bike lanes on United and South Streets at the downtown end of the Crosstown Greenway. So, the new Staples Avenue Bridge is part of this continuing investment.

Our Mayor, Teri Johnston on the Project

For years Mayor Teri Johnston consistently asks staff to find ways to put in more bike facilities and we’ve documented some of that here, here, here, here, here, and here. She was understandably pleased when we asked her about this project, saying:

“I want to congratulate our Multimodal Coordinator, Ryan Stachurski, and our engineering team for this thoughtful plan to improve safe passage for pedestrians and bicycles across our Staples Avenue Bridge. Over 7,000 bikes and pedestrians depend on this bridge to get to and from Key West each week.”

Wider Is Better

The current bridge is 10’8” wide, with bollards down the middle to prevent larger vehicles from trying to cross it. Those of us who use it regularly can attest that it takes some effort to cross it without falling off of your bike. And if there’s anyone else on the bridge at the same time, well, everyone just takes a deep breath and navigates with extreme caution. It just isn’t safe for multiple users.

The new replacement bridge will be 15-feet wide. Allowing for a 4-feet wide pedestrian crossing and a 9-feet wide, two-way bicycle path with no bollards, just a stripe down the middle. There will be a guardrail separating the bikes and pedestrians. Easy to navigate. Safer for everyone. Wider is indeed better. Here’s what the City’s Multi-Modal Coordinator Ryan Stachurski says of the project:

“Staples Bridge has been around for a couple decades, providing a safe and comfortable route for bicyclists and pedestrians avoiding the noise and exhaust of the auto-centric Flagler Ave or North Roosevelt Blvd. Hundreds of Key West bicyclists likely rely on Staples Bridge for their daily commute. As the existing steel bridge reaches the end of its useful life, we hope to replace it with an aluminum version that includes some safety upgrades for those who may be mobility impaired. Though we look forward to the improvements, the construction will cause some temporary inconveniences. Non-motorized traffic will be temporarily diverted to Flagler Ave during this time.”

While plans are still being finalized by the City’s Urban Forestry Manager, it is anticipated that the trees in the middle of the approach on both sides of the bridge will be relocated to the sides. About $10,000 has been set aside for landscaping.

When We Make It Easier and Safer to Bike, We All Win

The City should be commended for continuing to invest in the Crosstown Greenway and the new and improved Staples Avenue Bike/Ped Bridge will make it easier and safer for more of us to use bicycles to get from one end of town to the other. That’s a good thing because more of us biking helps our little island paradise fight traffic and parking congestion, improves our environment and makes us healthier, more prosperous and happier too.

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New Garden View Apartments Residents Being Provided Bus and Bike Incentives to Go Car-Free

Posted on June 16, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. Story is cross posted at KONK Life on June 16, 2023. Support ($) our local journalism here. Follow us at  Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook.

Tenants are just starting to move into the 103 units at the Key West Housing Authority’s new Garden View Apartments at 5220 College Road. That’ great news as it makes a dent in our critical need for affordable workforce housing. New residents are expected to receive some kind of Key West transit pass, providing them with free bus service on the new “Key West Rides” on demand service for Key West and Stock Island. To promote bicycling, the projects’ developers, with the City’s advice, have installed proper bicycle parking throughout the property in weather-protected areas under the buildings and near stairwells.

As the new development is only about 4 miles from the center of Duval Street and our Historic Seaport, it’s possible many residents can ride a bike the twenty-minutes or so to work, shop and play downtown. Treating bicycle parking as a bonafide transportation method signals residents without cars that they are valued too. Providing them with free transit encourages them to take the bus. The transit and bicycle incentives taken together will make it possible that residents can live car-free, saving thousands of dollars a year on the high cost of owning and operating a car. This brings overall livability costs down for our beleaguered work force and helps all of us as it alleviates traffic and parking congestion.

This is in stark contrast to the non-industry standard bike racks installed outside in the weather and the lack of any transit incentives or shuttle bus that the County approved at the recently occupied 240 units at Wreckers Cay on the other side of Stock Island. So, good for the City and the Housing Authority on getting it right. Let’s hope A.H. Monroe and the City do something similarly appropriate at The Lofts workforce housing project.

Research shows that the best time to get someone to change a commute habit is when they move into a new home or change jobs. So, the combination of proper bicycle parking at the home end, a relatively short distance to downtown and the potential for free transit passes help set the stage for more people ditching the car and using bikes and the bus to get from Garden View to downtown. Let’s take a look at the new bicycle parking, what we know about the bus passes and a few things we can do to make it even safer and easier for those wishing to bike between this new development and Old Town.

Free Transit

The details aren’t all fleshed out yet, but in the near future the City’s Sustainability Coordinator Alison Higgins hopes to reveal a special pass provided to new residents that will allow them to ride Key West Transit buses for free. As there is no more fixed-route service, that means residents will be able to use the new “Key West Rides” on-demand service. There are bus stops in each direction directly in front of the new buildings. If the Garden View pass is modeled on the current $25 31-Day Pass, that’s a $300 annual savings to Garden View Apartments residents and quite the incentive to try the new Key West Rides service.

Compare this to the County’s oversight of the new 240-unit Wreckers Cay housing complex. The County required a bus stop but didn’t require the developer to incentivize people to use the bus. No transit passes. No shuttle bus either. And this complex is larger than the Perry Hotel and Oceans Edge Resort, each of which provide free shuttle buses. So good on the City for trying to do something at Garden View.

Proper Bicycle Parking

We were very disappointed in the bicycle parking installed at Wreckers Cay in the fall and wrote about it here (Wreckers Cay and County Need to Do Better By New Residents Who Want to Bikes Between Stock island and Key West, September 2, 2022). The developers used non-industry standard wave bike racks that don’t support the frame of a bicycle and they installed them outside and exposed to the weather instead of under the cover of the building so they could get more cars parked there. And the County approved all of this.

In contrast, the City’s Multi-Modal Transportation Coordinator Ryan Stachurski worked with the Housing Authority throughout the process to ensure the Garden View Apartments had quality, industry standard racks and that they were put under the cover of the buildings to protect them from weather. Going even further and putting them in prime locations near the stairwells. If we’ add one more thing, it would be electric outlets for e-bikes and e-scooters. As we discussed in the September story, you get the transportation you build for. If you treat bicycles as an afterthought instead of as an essential mode of transportation, you’ll get people driving cars. If you provide suitable bike parking at both ends of the trips and a safe bicycle network, you’ll get more people biking. It’s that simple.

Four Miles or Twenty Minutes By Bike to Downtown

If we had our druthers, all new affordable workforce housing would be built downtown or at least on the Island of Key West in order to make it easy and thus maximize the potential for already cashed strapped workers to go car-free. But the Garden View Apartments is on the very edge of Stock Island and just 4 to 4.5 miles, depending on the route and destination to most of downtown. That’s just 20 to 24 minutes or doable for many able-bodied people. Put these folks on an electric assist bike and it is even quicker. Google Maps says the same drive in a car – without traffic – is 13 to 16 minutes. That doesn’t include time to find parking either. So, people on bicycles are not at much of a disadvantage timewise in comparison.

4 Things to Make It Safer and Easier to Bike Between the Garden View Apartments on Stock Island and Downtown

1 – We Need Bike Lanes on College Road

The County has done a nice job on their side of Stock Island by putting wide, often green bicycle lanes on the major streets of Maloney Avenue, 5^th Street, 5^th Avenue and Cross Street. On the City’s side of Stock Island, where the Garden View Apartments are located, College Road lacks any bicycle infrastructure. This is evident in the Stress Map. There seems ample room to rectify this. When I asked Mayor Johnston about this she said:

“Just drove down College road and was amazed that we resurface this road without consideration of a dedicated bicycle lane. This road is a major pedestrian and bicycle route that could have been made so much more efficient with a little more forethought. And yes, you may quote me. I am also grateful for the bicycle parking and convenient bus stop at the Garden View Apartments. And the fact that they are pet friendly.”

2 – We Need to Address N. Roosevelt Boulevard

For residents of the new Garden View Apartments, the shortest distance downtown is via N. Roosevelt Boulevard. While the wide Promenade that makes its way along the water much of the way can be beautiful, the many retail driveways make for a stressful and sometimes dangerous commute (Stress Map again), especially if drivers who aren’t accustomed to bicycle traffic coming from both directions, don’t look both ways, as evidenced by two bicycle deaths last year.

City staff tells us that as part of a plan to repave N. Roosevelt Boulevard in the near future, FDOT officials are doing a “safety audit” to study things they can do to make the highway safer while they are redoing the street. We understand this is in a draft form and will be shared with the public after it has been vetted. Green paint, raised sidewalks and mirrors where there are driveways? Signage? Consolidated driveways? Wider sidewalks in some places? Separation for e-bikes? A 25 or even 20 MPH limit? We don’t know what all the solutions could be, but we do know that FDOT, the City and the property owners need to fix things.

An alternative is to make it easier to cross the highway and get people onto the very safe Crosstown Greenway (Duck, Staples, Von Phister, South). But this adds more than a mile to the commute, the Triangle is a nightmare for bikes and there’s no safe crossing at Duck Avenue so, perhaps making N. Roosevelt Boulevard safer should be the priority. Especially as FDOT has already nixed a light at Duck Avenue.

3 – We Need to Spend Real Money and Educate Visitors to Slow Down and Be Careful Because Key West Is Different Than the Mainland

Educating the over million people who visit Key West each year, 77% of whom arrive by car, to watch out for and cede the way to bikes and pedestrians should be more of a priority. Most of these folks come from car-centric places where they aren’t used to sharing streets with so many bicycles, e-vehicles, and people. Nor are they used to our tiny, crowded streets. If we can spend $350,000 annually on marketing the Historic Seaport using an advertising vendor, by all means, we should hire a marketing firm and market a car-free experience to visitors AND provide a safety campaign aimed at those that drive, educating them that Key West is different, and cars don’t rule. The City spends virtually no money on this. Nor does the TDC. Nor does the County. During this summer’s budget season, we should tell our commissioners at every level to put some money where their mouths are because they all talk about education as a good thing but never put anything behind it. If they spend some real dollars, we’ll all be safer for it.

4 – More Bike Parking at the Work End

Having a safe and reliable place to park your bicycle makes it more likely you’ll use it. So just like having good parking at their new Garden View home is a good thing, so is great parking on the work, shop and play end. On Duval and adjacent streets, we’ve observed full bike racks and bikes parked on trees, streetlights, building and signposts and fences. As we documented two weeks ago the City has started to put in more racks around downtown. But it isn’t enough, it isn’t consistent, it needs to be in the streets – not on the sidewalks and it needs to happen more quickly. Again, the ask to commissioners is to put up more dollars. We only spend $45K a year on bike parking, much of which is replacing worn out racks. Imagine what spending $200K annually for a while could do?

When We Make It Easier to Bike and Take the Bus, We All Win

Having a safe and reliable place to park your bicycle at home, work, shopping, and play and having a safe and connected network of trails that can get people quickly from Stock Island to downtown make it easier and thus more likely more of us will use a bike to get around instead of driving a car. Free and frequent bus service make it easier and more likely people can rely on transit for work, shopping, and play. For our strapped workforce, going car-free can also save lots of money on the high cost of owning a car. More people going car-free helps all of us fight traffic and parking congestion, improves our environment, makes us healthier and happier and it is more prosperous for downtown Mom and Pop Shops too. It makes our little island more like the paradise it should be. We all win when we make it easier and safer to bike and take the bus.

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City Wants Your Help In Locating New Bike Parking

Posted on June 2, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. Story is cross posted at KONK Life on June 2, 2023. Support ($) our local journalism here. Follow us at  Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook.

If you follow the City’s official government and Car-Free Key West Facebook pages, you may have noticed a pattern over the last few months. Nearly every week they’ve proudly posted one or two pictures of newly installed bicycle parking spaces downtown. 25 percent of the installations are replacing worn out bike racks, but three quarters are additional capacity in new locations. In 2022 they installed 125 parking spaces and this year so far have installed 84, bringing the total number of publicly available bicycle parking spaces to over 3,000. They’re expecting to install perhaps another 84 before the end of this year and hope to have money for maybe another 230 next year. And they’d really like for local businesses and the public to help them locate where these should go.

And while this may seem like a lot of bike parking, there’s still a need for even more. If you’ve been downtown, especially during the season, you know people are parking their bikes to trees, signs, street light poles, fences, and anything that doesn’t move. And our downtown’s narrow sidewalks are crowded with people, tables and chairs and bike racks – so there’s a need to put more of the new bike parking in the streets instead. Let’s look at all of this a bit closer and show how you can help.

The Numbers

Ryan Stachurski, the City’s Multi-Modal Transportation Coordinator in the Engineering Department is a data geek. And that’s a good thing. All the bike racks are in a geographic data base by type, number of spaces, public or private, condition and there’s even a picture. Wow! All the new ones will be included so we can track progress. Mr. Stachurski tells us that with the 84 new parking spaces installed this year, there are now 3,038 publicly available bicycle parking spaces. Of these, 2,295 or 76% were installed by the City and 743 or 24% by local businesses on their property accessible for public use.

There are 223 “Post & Loop” style racks that store two bikes per install (pictured at right). These are also called “Post & hitch” and are the kind you’d notice on sidewalks.

There are 261 Other “U’s on Rails” (upside down U) or “Loop” style racks or “Emerson” (patented aluminum style) racks on sidewalks and in the streets. These store anywhere between 2 and 12 bikes per rack. If you have 4 or 5 “U’s” on a rail, that is considered a “bike corral.” A 12-space corral can easily fit in one car parking space. This kind of rack is depicted in the featured picture at the top of the article.

There are 72 racks of other styles. These racks can also accommodate 2 to 12 bikes per install. According to Mr. Stachurski these racks generally don’t meet basic requirements recommended by the Association of Pedestrian & Bicycle Professionals (APBP). They include Wave, Rack, Comb, etc. styles and often don’t support bikes at two points (to prevent tipping), permit securing with a U-lock, or store bikes in a manner that doesn’t damage them. These will be phased out over time, or by request.

We Still Need More Bike Parking

While the City has made strides in the 18 months since Mr. Stachurski has come on board, we’ve documented that for a 3 year period between 2019 and 2021 not a lot of money was spent on bike parking and in 2021 the $45,000 budget allocation was spent to help match a grant to provide bike parking at Lower Keys Shuttle bus stops rather than on replacing or adding new bike parking downtown. So, we’re just now beginning to catch up on a backlog.

With the high rates of commuting by bike (12.4% for Key West residents) and with record numbers of visitors renting bikes to get around, it is common to see overloaded bike racks and bicycles locked to signs, street light poles, trees, and fences along Duval and everywhere in our historic commercial district downtown. Especially during season. We simply need more.

Crowded Downtown Sidewalks Should Be for People

Most of the recent bicycle parking installs, at least if the pictures posted on Facebook are an accurate depiction, have been put on sidewalks. As we’ve documented, our mostly narrow downtown sidewalks are already overcrowded with people. And in some spaces with chairs and tables. Our good friend and chronicler of the Key West condition via Key West Island news Linda Grist Cunningham has made similar observations that sidewalks should be for people.

And why are we putting bike parking and tables and chairs on the sidewalks and making an overcrowded situation worse? Because we seem to value private car storage or parking over people. We should move new bike parking and tables and chairs to the streets in bike corrals and in parklets.

Lets Put More Parking In Bike Corrals On the Streets In Predictable Places

A bike corral can accommodate 12 bikes in the space of 1 car. We’ve made the case that not only should bike parking be in the street, but that along the entire length of Duval it should be located in the first car parking space in each cross street. And the next space should be for scooters. The consistency attracts users and it helps intersection sight lines. This isn’t some crazy bike advocates’ idea. This is actually the idea of the City’s Parking Director. Someone at City Hall needs to listen to him.

Every retail shop or group of shops in Old Town should have an in-street bike corral and scooter parking right out front or adjacent to it. We’d fit 12 bikes and 6 scooters in the space of 2 cars. That’s a win for everyone and good for business.

How You Can Help

You can help by letting the Mayor and Commissioners know you want them to spend more money on bicycle parking (that money for 230 bike racks Mr. Stachurski is counting on hasn’t been allocated yet), that we want it faster and that we want it in bike corrals in the streets, not on our crowded sidewalks.

And you can help the City prioritize locations for bicycle parking by telling them where it is needed right now, so Mr. Stachurski can plan to install those 84 spaces the rest of this year and 230 next year where YOU want them most. Here’s what Ryan told us:

“We have hundreds of secure bike parking spaces in Key West and are working to standardize the locations so residents and visitors can expect to find available bike parking wherever they ride. We can prioritize bike parking requests where people tell us there’s a need. The Key West Connect app makes it easy to show us where we need more racks. Just snap a picture, tell us what you think is needed, and then you can track the installation process on your phone.”   

Locate Existing Racks – If you’d like to locate existing racks the City has a great Key West Bicycle Racks tool that shows the location of the 3,038 racks. Click on a specific rack and it tells you detailed information about the kind of rack, who installed it and its condition.

Request a New Rack – here’s where you can Request a Bicycle Rack, Report a Damaged Bicycle Rack and Report an Abandoned Bicycle.

All of this and much more can be found on the City’s Car-Free Key West page here.

When We Make It Easier to Bike, We All Win

Having a safe and reliable place to park your bicycle at work, shopping and play makes it easier and thus more likely more of us will use a bike to get around instead of driving a car. That helps fight traffic and parking congestion, improves our environment, makes us healthier, more prosperous for downtown Mom and Pop Shops, and happier too. It makes our little island more like the paradise it should be. We all win when we make it easier to bike!

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Streets for People / Helping Islanders Go Car-Free Or Car-Lite Can Help With Our Affordable Housing Crisis

Posted on May 18, 2023     1 Comment

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life  on May 18, 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

A couple weeks ago the Washington Post reported that as of March, higher interest rates and pricier models put the average cost of a new car nationwide at $48,008. Data from Edmunds says the average monthly payment hit $730 in April and TransUnion says $738. Money Under 30 puts the total cost of car ownership at around $940 a month. AAA’s monthly estimate in 2022 was $894 or $10,000 annually. Potato Patato, however you slice owning and operating a car, its expensive. For those of us who live in Key West, where our agreed upon number one issue is affordable housing, the high cost of getting around by car just makes life’s overall affordability all the worse.

What if each adult in a family didn’t need to own a car to get around and could instead rely on a frequent, and easy-to-use transit system or a safe and easy-to-use network of bicycle facilities to get around for some or all trips? Going from two cars to one car (car-lite) or even car-free could save a family thousands of dollars every year. Money that can take the sting out of our ever-increasing mortgages and rents. So, while the City’s approach on affordable housing, as evidenced in its Strategic Plan, is admirable, shouldn’t our approach also address every family’s second highest expense, transportation?

Vanna, I’ll take a “Y” an “E” and an “S” please. Yes. Investing in our struggling transit system and safer streets isn’t just for our visitors and isn’t just some nice amenity that can be relegated to the side and put on the slow burner. Building a robust transit service and safer streets in a big way now, is an investment in our residents and workers and can be part of the solution on affordability that is chasing much of our working and middle class away. Here’s a quick closer look and a few things to do.

Housing + Transportation = A More Complete Measure of Affordability

For most people, after housing, transportation is their second biggest expense. Studies that have looked at housing and transportation costs have found that lower transportation costs in areas with good access and transit help offset higher housing costs across most income groups. Location affordability measures the share of income spent on housing AND transportation. Households in location efficient places spend significantly less on household transportation, often enough to offset the higher housing costs of these choice neighborhoods. Walkable blocks with good transit service and bike facilities especially contribute to these savings. Check out the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing + Transit Index tool for more.

The Case for Better Transit

Nobody takes the bus for work. According to the latest data from the U.S. Census, less than 1 percent of Key West (0.2%) and County (0.35%) residents use transit to get to work. In a strategic plan survey of residents in January of 2020 no one knew enough about the bus lines to answer questions about Key West Transit and the system was the only one of 20 City services left without a rating. We’ve documented that Duval Loop ridership has plummeted, that the City’s bus stops are lacking, and that there’s awful service from Stock Island to Key West (here, here and here).

And we’ve also documented some recent efforts to turn this all around. Staff took an interim step to fix Duval Loop bus stops, has a long-term plan to upgrade nearly all the stops on the Lower Keys Shuttle and began on-demand service on Key West and Stock Island in December and will start a “Workers Express” shuttle on June 5.

The recent efforts, while an admirable start, may only be stopping the hemorrhaging. Last year Key West Transit scrapped its very good and ambitious 10-Year Plan, developed in 2019, as “outmoded fiscally and by workforce availability.” Recent social media reaction to shifting from the North and South line routes to the “Key West Rides” on-demand service, also on June 5, has been mixed. We’re convinced their original 10-Year Plan with 15–20-minute service on shorter circulators and longer-haul connectors was the way to go.

We’re willing to give the agency the benefit of the doubt to try these new concepts. What we really think needs to happen though, regardless of the route structure, or lack of it in the case of on-demand, is a much bigger investment (read money) in people, infrastructure, and marketing to make the system frequent and reliable enough to convince people to ditch their cars.

The Case for Better Bicycle Facilities

According to the U.S. Census, 12.4% of Key West residents get to work by bike. In 2010 it was 16%. Only 1.7% of County residents bike to work. Another 7% and 4% respectively walk. Given our small size, flat terrain, and good weather, it should be more. A lot more.

We’ve talked about the dangers of biking between Stock Island and Key West here and here, about recent crashes that have led to bicycle deaths here and here, about the need for better and more bicycle parking here, and about all the times the City, County or State did a road project, ignored the Bike Plan and didn’t put in bike lanes here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

With the advent of a new Multi-Modal Transportation Coordinator there’s been more hope and progress. As a result, recently the City snagged a $400K planning grant that could lead to even more money, has started work on new bike lanes on United and South Streets and is starting to plan for a new bike facility at Wickers field, and maybe a new bike path behind the airport. And we’re aware of more. But just like with transit, there’s a lack of staff, and construction and marketing dollars to make things happen bigger and sooner.

In order to really move the needle and double the number of people biking for transportation, enabling people to save tons of money by ditching their car, we need to create a safe and connected network of bicycle facilities (trails, protected lanes, and lanes) all over Key West and Stock Island. The advent of the e-bike is helping to make it easier. But we have to address making it safer. And that’s where the facilities and marketing come in. Key West has the good bones, compact size, flat surface, and good weather to make it happen. The Mayor says we can be the #1 best small bicycling city in the U.S.A. The City and County just need to double down and spend a lot more money to make it happen sooner.

More Affordable Housing Downtown Please

Everyone agrees we need more affordable housing. But putting it on Stock Island and further up the Keys just makes it more likely people will need a car to get around. Especially beyond Stock Island. The 126 units at The Lofts in Bahama Village is the way to go. All future workforce housing should be put on the island of Key West where people have access to transit or easy biking and walking distances. For example, Searstown and Kmart Plaza can be redeveloped as island-friendly places with housing. And we need to look for large parcels downtown to develop more places like The Lofts.

Getting Around Without a Car Can Lessen the Burden on Working People

Our housing affordability crisis, the lack of workers and our friends moving away because of this is well documented. The City and County need to work their plans and keep at addressing the housing issue. But overall affordability, housing + transportation, is a more holistic way of looking at this issue. Investing in better transit and bike facilities, thus enabling people to go car-free or car-lite brings overall living costs down. That’s good for our residents and workers. When the budget season rolls around this summer, ask your City and County Commissioners what they are doing to radically make our islands easy to get around without the high expense of a car. We’ll all be better off if they do.

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For an in-depth look at this issue please read How Better Transit and Bicycle Facilities Can Help Address Affordable Housing. For more information on bicycling and Transit in Key West visit Getting Around Key West.

Brand New Bike Lanes Coming to United and South Streets

Posted on May 5, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life newspaper on May 5, 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

Now that the utility work is complete, construction starts in the coming weeks on a $4.8 million investment in a new, improved and rebuilt United Street between Whitehead and Grinnell Streets. All new curb and gutter and sidewalks, that includes narrower and safer pedestrian crossings at most intersections, fresh and smooth asphalt, lots of new trees, and best of all a brand spanking new, wider is better, extra-width bike lane – where none had been before – for the entire length of the project heading out of downtown.

The new bike lane will connect up with bike lanes on Reynolds Street, White Street and the Crosstown Greenway cutting across the middle of the City, helping to create a more connected network of facilities. And in a year or two the same thing will be done with the rebuilding of South Street adding a new bike lane in the opposite direction, coming into town. Think of this as similar to the Fleming and Southard pair of bike lanes. Mayor Teri Johnston has been asking for staff to find places for new bicycle facilities and they are delivering! That makes safer streets for cars and bikes and is a win for Key West.

Mayor Johnston On the United Street Project

If you’ve been following our column for the past few years, you know we’ve quoted Mayor Teri Johnston on numerous occasions consistently asking staff to find ways to put in more bike facilities (here, here, here, here, here, here and numerous others, but you get the idea). She was understandably pleased when we asked her about this particular project, saying:

“Dedicated bicycle lanes are essential in Key West. It is the solution for taking bikes and e-bikes off of the sidewalk and into a safe, dedicated lane in the street. With some thoughtful planning we can accommodate the same number of on street parking spots, add a bicycle lane and create a better flow of vehicular traffic.”

What the New United Street Bike Facility Will Look Like

Interim Engineering Director Gary Volenec and Multi-Model Transportation Coordinator Ryan Stachurski of the City’s Engineering Department have been looking for opportunities to provide the Mayor and Commission with safer streets that include bike lanes. They also note this helps fulfill part of the City’s Strategic Plan as the community has asked for safer streets.

With each new construction project comes an opportunity to redesign with complete streets in mind. United Street doesn’t quite have enough room for safe bike lanes on each side of the two-way street. So, the solution, is to have an extra wide bike lane on one side of the street – going out of downtown and a Sharrow or shared lane on the other side. But a block away, with South Street scheduled to be rebuilt next year, the idea is that another wider-is-better bike lane can be built coming into to down. The pair will then act as a safer way to get in and out of downtown, working similarly to the Fleming and Southard Streets pair – but safer because they are wider.

Here’s what Ryan Stachurski has to say about the project:

“The United Street project that’s under construction now includes a number of complete streets elements that have been called for by members of our community, our strategic plan, and our City Commissioners. It will provide dedicated space for Key West’s large number of bicyclists (electric & otherwise) that many should find comfortable to operate in. It includes bicycle wayfinding signs to help keep users on course, and the large number of street trees going in will improve our canopy over time in addition to making it more enjoyable to take a stroll down United Street.”

New Bike Lanes and Signage Enhance the Network Effect

There are many examples in Key West of pieces of bike trails and lanes that just end, leaving riders with no choice but to mix with cars, often on our most crowded and busy streets. In surveys across the land, people say that the lack of a connected network of safe bicycle facilities to get them to work, shop and play, is what inhibits many people from riding a bike for transportation. The new United and South Street bike lanes will help better connect with a growing network on this side of town.

The bike lanes map here shows the new United and South Streets pair connecting to the Reynolds Street bike lanes which take you to Higgs Beach and beyond that on the Atlantic Boulevard Trail to the Bertha Trail and onto the S. Roosevelt Promenade. So, this gets people safely from the beaches into downtown without having to mix with traffic. Similarly, those using the Crosstown Greenway from the top of the island at the Cow Key Channel will now be able to get downtown on a safe bike lane. Mr. Stachurski tells us that new signage (depicted by the red dots in the picture) will help orient people to various points along the safe bike network. They’ll also connect with the bike lanes on White Street.

Better, Safer Bicycling = Better Key West

We applaud Mayor Teri Johnston for her relentlessness in consistently asking staff to consider new bike infrastructure with every street rebuilding and repaving. That along with some new leadership in the Engineering Department and the Mayor’s mantra is finally being heard and acted upon. The start of the United Street project and South Street next year is good news in helping build a connected network of safe bicycle facilities.

Key West is full of cars AND bikes and that’s different than most places. According to the U.S. Census, 12.4% of Key West residents commute to work by bicycle. That’s a lot more than some of the top “bike” cities in the country. Key West bike rental shops continue to do record business. So, there’s a lot of bikes and now e-bikes and e-scooters mixing with golf carts, scooters and cars. As so many of these people on the street are visitors from car-centric mainland places, they aren’t used to this jumble of vehicle types and that’s a dangerous mix. And that is why we need a seamless, connected, and safe network of bike facilities.

The United Street project represents progress toward that end. To make our little island a bicycle paradise that will help us fight traffic and parking congestion, improve our environment, and make us healthier, more prosperous, and happier too. Let’s applaud the Mayor and staff for moving the ball forward.

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For more information visit our Getting Around Key West by bike page. We also have a bus, walk and parking page too.

Streets for People / New “Workforce Express” Key West Transit Service Begins May 15 Between Stock Island and Bahama Village

Posted on May 3, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life newspaper on May 3 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

Note: Since we published this story the City pushed back the debut of these changes to June 5.

Key West Transit begins a brand-new service dubbed the “Workforce Express” on Monday, May 15 between Stock Island and Bahama Village. There are four early morning trips about every hour beginning at 6:05 am in each direction, and then another four trips in the late afternoon beginning at 3:45. Each trip will take about 30 minutes, thus the moniker “Express,” and follow a simple and direct route. As this service begins, Key West Transit will phase out its old, North and South line routes with a full transition to the “Key West Rides” Uber-like on-demand service on Key West and Stock Island. The “Lower Keys Shuttle” and “Duval Loop” remain the same.

The new route is a welcome addition to a transit agency that is trying to help our beleaguered workforce get around without need of a car. As we’ve written in the past about the need for better transit for our workers between Stock Island and Key West (here and here and here) the addition of the Workforce Express bus service is good news and helps with downtown traffic and parking congestion too.

The New Workforce Express Route

The Workforce Express begins at the newly occupied 240-unit Wreckers Cay workforce housing development and then heads downtown via Duck Avenue where it will pass by the Poinciana Plaza Apartments and Arrive (formerly West Isle) Apartments on the one side and Key West Estates better known as “Smurf Village” on the other side. A lot of Key West workers live in these places, so the “Workforce Express” is aptly named. The route then turns onto Kennedy and finds North Roosevelt where it stays on Truman all the way into Bahama Village where people can walk to their job on Duval Street or catch a ride on the Duval Loop over to the Seaport. The route also follows the same path in the opposite direction. Fares are the usual $2 per trip, $8 a week or $25 a month.

Key West Rides Data Begets Workforce Express Route

Back in the fall when we interviewed Key West Transit Director Rod Delostrinos, about the new Key West Rides on-demand service he told us:

“The key to determining better service is to analyze the first few months of on-demand transit service, recognize emerging ridership patterns, and possibly develop additional transit service such as limited express bus.”

And lo and behold after just five months of collecting data from the on-demand service, they’ve come up with a new fixed-route express based on these ridership patterns. Anecdotally, we’ve heard from people on Stock Island and at the apartments along Duck that they’d been using the Key West Rides service to get to their job’s downtown. But one of the complaints was that the on-demand bus was circuitous and thus took a long time. Now those same people can zip into downtown on an express. Rod confirmed all this, telling us this week:

“The route is the product of our analysis of the Key West Rides On-Demand Transit. We were able to see ridership aggregation patterns of pick-up and drop-off locations. Fielding this route will get those recurring riders to their destinations faster and at the same time free up the Key West Rides On-Demand Transit service for other trips on Stock Island and Key West.”

Better Transit = Better Key West

Back in the fall as the Key West Rides service was about to debut, Mayor Teri Johnston told us:

“I’m thrilled to get the on-demand service up and running. As new housing units are added in and around Key West, this service can offer a cost effective and reliable way to get to and from work, save some money, reduce our street congestion, noise levels, parking issues and pollution, all while lowering our stress levels.”

Our Mayor, who has consistently pushed our transit agency for more and better service says it well. Good, reliable, frequent transit helps our workers, residents and visitors get around without need of a car. For our workforce, that means saving money that can be used towards sky high rents. And it means a more people-oriented and friendly downtown. We all win when Key West Transit is successful, so let’s wish this latest iteration of bus service good luck.

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For more information on all of Key West Transit’s bus service visit our Getting Around Key West by Bus page. We also have a bike, walk and parking page too.

Streets for People / County Officials Reserved On-Street Parking Stands In Way of Completing Southard Street Bike Lane

Posted on April 21, 2023     2 Comments

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life newspaper on April 21 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

NOTE: Updated Story here on March 8, 2024: Monroe County to City’s Request for Bike Lane: Drop Dead.

Southard Street has had a bike lane from White Street down to Whitehead at the Green Parrot for as long as anyone can remember. It and the parallel bike lane on Fleming are heavily trafficked by locals, workers, and visitors to get in and out of and around downtown. So, last year when the City started a project to rebuild the sidewalk and street in the 300 and 400 blocks of Southard, bicycle enthusiasts were hopeful that the Vision of the adopted Bike Plan would be fulfilled, and the bike lane would finally be extended into the busy 300 block and on into the Truman Waterfront Park. Alas, as has happened with so many projects, the 300 block was recently repainted exactly as it had been before, with “Reserved Parking” for County officials on the public right-of-way and no bike lane where the Bike Plan says there should be one. Parking for a few seems to trump safe biking for the many, again.

We’re told by City staff this is complicated because although this is a City street, there’s some sort of agreement between the City and the County giving this side of the street over to parking for County State Attorney officials and the Supervisor of Elections at the adjacent building in this block. To her credit, last month Mayor Teri Johnston asked the City Manager and City Attorney to figure out a way to get the bike lane done. In turn the City Attorney has asked his counterparts at the County to amend the agreement. A couple months ago we asked our County Commissioner for help, but he hasn’t been able to make headway. With County parking lots in the back of and on the side of the building we’re wondering why the County is reluctant to help make bicycling into Truman Waterfront Park safer.

Our hope is that County officials will see the folly of a few private parking spaces for government officials blocking a needed and proposed bike lane into the City’s signature park and reverse course before the paint gets too dry.

What’s Out There Today

The Southard and Fleming Streets bicycle lanes are well known, covering the 1100 blocks from White Street all the way down to the 400 blocks at Whitehead. And with the 300 and 400 blocks of Southard recently rebuilt and repaved, the new and improved bike lane in the 400 block of Southard Street looks great until it peters out just before you get to Whitehead. So, all of a sudden, if you are going to the Truman Waterfront Park, bikes suddenly have to take the lane and move into car traffic just where the street becomes two-way and gets even busier.

What the Bike Plan Says To Do

The City’s adopted Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan indicates on page 34 of its Vision Network to replace the current sharrows in the 300 block with a proper bike lane to complete the network all the way into Truman Waterfront Park. The perfect time to make that change is during a repaving. So, expectations were high when the street was recently rebuilt and repaved. But when construction was complete the street configuration was put back just the same as before, with private parking on-street for County officials and no bike lane. Why didn’t they follow the Bike Plan?

Why A Bike Lane Hasn’t Been Put In, Yet

When we asked why no bike lane was put in, per the Bike Plan, we learned that the City and County have a contract that was approved at a 2001 City Commission meeting to provide free on-street parking for County employees along this block during work hours. And so, we’ve been told the County must agree to let go of these spaces. The same agreement allows the County to use the 500 block of Thomas and the 400 block of Fleming for parking too. The County also owns a big parking lot behind the buildings on Thomas. If they have a crunch, perhaps they could add a deck to that parking lot. Or maybe they could provide incentives to get more of their employees to bike or take transit. Most employers downtown let their employees fend for themselves. We get that they want to do something for their most important employees, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of on-street City right-of-way that could be used for people on bikes and safer streets.

For a couple years now Mayor Teri Johnston has repeated the mantra to staff that she wants to see opportunities for bike and pedestrian improvements with every street rebuild or repaving and she’s been birddogging this particular issue. She asked the County Manager and Attorney to get this bike lane done and the City Attorney is talking to his counterparts at the County. That’s where we stand today. The ball is in the County’s court.

We Need a Network of Bike Facilities In Key West Not Disconnected Pieces

The fact that the Southard Street bike lane simply ends at the Green Parrot and dumps people on bikes into a jumble of traffic to fend for themselves, exemplifies the missing pieces of a larger safe bicycling network. Key West is full of cars AND bikes and that’s different than most places. According to the U.S. Census 15% of Key West residents commute to work by bicycle. That’s a lot more than some of the top “bike” cities in the country. Key West bike rental companies continue to do a record business. So, there’s a lot of bikes and now e-bikes and e-scooters mixing with golf carts, scooters, and cars. As so many of these people on the street are visitors from car-centric mainland places, they aren’t used to this jumble of vehicle types and that’s a dangerous mix. And it is why we need a seamless, connected, and safe network of bike facilities. Completing this bike lane all the way through to the park, as the Bike Plan instructs us to, helps achieve a safer network. And that’s better for everyone. People in cars and on bikes. Let’s hope Monroe County officials agree.

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Streets for People / The Canary In Our Florida Keys Coal Mine Is Our Fragile Water System. Here’s 10 Things to Reign In Overtourism and Overdevelopment that Killed the Bird

Posted on March 31, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life newspaper on March 31 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

After most of us experienced a temporary water shut off March 11 and 12 and then a boil-water order, Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority (FKAA) Executive Director Greg Veliz explained in an open letter to customers what happened and all but admitted we’ve reached our limit on development and tourists, as our water system can no longer handle the increased demands. As a result, the FKAA has reduced the daily volume of water to relieve pressure on our aging pipes that are in desperate need of an expensive replacement. That’s why you experience a reduction in water pressure. And with a $42M project to replace 4 miles of pipe beginning in April and an admitted need to replace all 130 miles of the 40-year-old pipes at $10M a mile, our capacity isn’t increasing anytime soon.

Traffic is getting worse by the year; affordable housing is impossible to find for our beleaguered workers and there’s a growing list of jobs going unfilled creating lowered expectations on everything from restaurant and hotel service to public transit and essential City/County services. Overtourism and overdevelopment relate to the carrying capacity of a community. If the other indicators haven’t convinced you that we’ve reached our growth limit, FKAA’s mea culpa that they can’t pump any more water through our old, creaky pipes surely reveals it’s time we say “enough” and get off the merry-go-round of ever more visitors and the increased development that caters to them.

Overtourism and overdevelopment lead to housing, traffic, and water quality problems in our nearshore waters. They risk our ability to escape during a hurricane. Now even our fresh water supply can’t keep up. Here are several indicators that we’ve reached capacity and 10 things we can do to get off the merry-go-round and preserve and protect the quality of life in Key West and the Florida Keys.

FKAA’s Candid Admission We’ve Reached Our Capacity

Here’s the gist of what FKAA Director Greg Veliz said in his March 23 letter:

“We have customarily pumped between 23 and 26 million gallons per day. Prior to Covid, our levels were closer to 19 to 21 million gallons a day. The demands on our system have continued to increase…The pipe, in its current condition, is simply not able to support the volume of water or the pressures required to move it, therefore we have been forced to make reductions…We do not feel confident that our pipes can continue to handle 23-26 million gallons a day, so we have limited our output to 22 million gallons a day. In order to achieve that we’ve had to reduce pressure.”

Other indicators include: traffic congestion continues to be a top concern as ever more thousands of cars arrive on our islands every day. Our airports report record arrivals. Affordable housing consistently ranks as the number one issues in surveys and is our number one priority in the City’s strategic plan. The cruise ships, wastewater, shallow injection wells and dying reef issues amply demonstrate that we’re overcapacity. And we don’t even know if we can safely evacuate all our people – a major indicator of overcapacity – because the hurricane evacuation model has not been updated since 2010.

In a nutshell, we’ve reached our capacity for people.

Overtourism and the Resulting Overdevelopment Is Reducing Our Quality of Life

Don’t take it from me, here’s what some thoughtful environmentalists are saying:

“The level of development that has been allowed just doesn’t make sense. Traffic is overcapacity. Our coral reef is dying. Our endangered species are declining. The level of development is insane. We need start back-peddling.”
– Dottie Moses, lives on Key Largo and volunteers with Save A Turtle, Florida Keys Scenic Corridor Alliance and more

“Low water pressure, overcrowded highway, dead reef, decreased water quality, etc. We exceeded development levels a long time ago.”
– Don DeMaria, long-time commercial fisherman and advisor to the Sanctuary Advisory Panel and other fishing and environmental groups, lives on Summerland Key

Vacation rentals are the major cause of our lack of housing. We are never going to be able to build ourselves out of the housing problem. “
– Denise Werling, served many years on the Monroe County Planning Board and lives on Cudjoe Key

7 Things Our Community Should Do To Address Overtourism and Overdevelopment

1 – Divert Tourist Development Council (TDC) Funds from Marketing to infrastructure that Invests in Resiliency and Workforce Housing

We need to stop mass promoting Key West and the Florida Keys. Our destinations and events can promote themselves. The incessant general advertising helps fuel people turning their homes into vacation rentals. Turn off the spigot. People know we are here and will find us. And those dollars should be used for infrastructure that tourists use and the people that serve them.

2 – Help Stop Sham “Affordable Housing” Development

We need to make our discontent known to those in power. Developers and their attorneys are at virtually every city and county commission meeting, asking for approval for yet another “affordable housing” project that is anything but affordable. No one holds their feet to the fire to ensure these projects have a significant number of low or very-low-income units. Because of the high annual median income (AMI) in Monroe County, $73,153 (we have lots of second homeowners and wealthy retirees), two of the four “Affordable Housing” categories are actually “Market Rate” or above.  So, a developer can receive Federal Affordable Housing Grant incentives and get virtually anything approved locally – yet build an entire complex of housing that’s 100% Market Rate. Don’t be fooled by these “Affordable Housing Projects” – require any new development or re-development include at least 50% of Low or Very Low Affordable Housing. 

3 – Crack Down on Illegal Vacation Rentals and Discourage Conversions

Florida law does not currently allow “carve outs” that permit local communities or counties to restrict the number of vacation rentals. Yet, the Keys are an Area of Critical State Concern.  If ever a carve out was possible it would be for our ACSC. Our politicians should be asking for this, rather than asking the legislature to approve more building permits that the Florida courts have already deemed illegal and would jeopardize safe hurricane evacuation. Let’s ask our City, County and State representatives to do this in next year’s session. The time to start working this issue is now.

4 – Let the Truman Annex Transient Rental Licenses Expire in 2025

There’s no need for the City to do anything for the 162 properties with transient licenses in the Truman Annex. No study. No compensation. No nothing. Simply let them expire and then vigorously enforce the 30-day rule on anyone who wants to continue to rent. Maybe some of these units will become homes for locals again.

5 – Sunset As Many Existing Transient Rental Licenses As Possible

For other transient licenses there have to be some regulatory provisions to “sunset” these over time. Or buy them out. Or don’t let them transfer with a property sale. Or simply jack up annual fees and taxes on short-term rentals so the penalties exceed the sky-high rental income levels involved.

6 – Limit Vacation Rentals and Provide Incentives for Property Owners to Rent Long-term to Workers

For every stick there should be a carrot. What can we do to limit vacation rentals and make it easier and more profitable for people to rent long-term to workers instead of short-term to vacationers? Put a cap on the number of vacation rentals? Provide property tax breaks to long-term rental properties? Subsidies for property owners providing long-term affordable housing (could be paid for via fees from vacation rental permits or fines imposed on illegal short-term rentals)?

7 – Oppose The Use of the 1,00 New ROGO’s Outside of Key West

In a March 23 story in FLKeysNews about FKAA saying they needed more than a billion dollars to replace 130 miles of aging pipe reporter David Goodhue said:

“As the pipes continue to age, the Keys are seeing an ever-increasing number of tourists, vacation renters and residents. A bill is also making its way through the Legislature that would allow the building of 1,300 more affordable housing units in the Keys, raising questions of how the struggling infrastructure will be able to keep up.

“That is one of many issues that make the continued effort to add more development to an already over-developed string of islands so ill-advised,” said Richard Grosso, an environmental attorney representing several residents trying to block passage of the bill, HB 627. “The Keys are struggling to find the money and capacity to keep existing roads, homes and businesses dry and keep the water running, and facing dangerous evacuation times just when hurricanes are getting less predictable and intense.”

Since this story the Florida Legislature has passed and the Governor on Thursday signed the bill Mr. Grosso references (HB 627 was rolled into SB 102) to provide a legislative fix to the Florida Supreme Court ruling upholding the Third District Court of Appeals decision in August 2022 to not allow use of 1,000 ROGO’s (Unincorporated Monroe 300, Marathon 300, Islamorada 300 Key Colony Beach 50, and Layton 50) of the 1,300 because it violated Florida Statute 380.0552 that designated the Keys an Area of State Critical Concern. The new ROGO’s were provided to the Keys in 2018 by then Governor Rick Scott. Key West’s 300 were allowed but have not been used yet. According to a March 30 story in the Citizen Marathon and Islamorada plan to use their allocations and Monroe County hasn’t formally applied to use them.

So those ROGO’s are coming – although perhaps not without another court case. We should demand Monroe County, Marathon (who’s already allocated most of them to specific developments and built 52 of them), and Islamorada not accept using these for all the capacity reasons we’ve talked about above, including the hurricane evacuation concerns discussed in the March 30 story.

While we need more affordable housing units, the fact is we wouldn’t need them if we addressed the overtourism that drives people to turn existing residential units into vacation rentals or required developers to dedicate 50% of their “affordable housing” project to Low or Very-Low-Income levels. Most of the remaining ROGO’s left in the system (those beyond the 1,000) should only be used for affordable workforce housing.

3 Things You Can Do To Help

1 – Join Last Stand

Last Stand is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that’s been fighting to protect the Keys quality of life and natural environment since 1987. Full disclosure, I’m a Board Member. We are currently taking stands on overdevelopment and overtourism as it effects safe evacuation time, affordable housing, traffic congestion, water quality, our hospitals, police and more. We recently gave an award to Safer Cleaner Ships and supported the recent victory in pushing back on the use of shallow-injection wells in Marathon to help save our nearshore water quality. We are part of the consortium of groups who recently tried to block passage of HB 627 (now SB102) of which Richard Grasso (above) is a part. We help educate and inform and track legislation at the County and City level. Join our mailing list here. Follow us on Facebook. Become a member here.

2 – Follow and Subscribe to Local News and Groups

Stay informed about local issues by following and subscribing to local news outlets.

As the bumper sticker says, “I get my news from Gwen Filosa!” Gwen is our local WLRN NPR southernmost reporter. In addition to her own reports here she avidly consolidates news from around the island, so follow her Facebook and Twitter pages and you’ll always be up-to-date. You’ll have fun too.

Key West Island News’ website is another great resource. Editor Linda Grist Cunningham has a weekly column and has local news and Florida news pages that consolidate other sources so you don’t have to scroll all over the place. The Facebook page is a must follow too.

Keys Weekly is online or pick up a copy every Thursday at the red boxes and locations around town. There are Key West, Marathon and Upper Keys issues each week. Local owners Britt Myers and Jason Koler and Editor Mandy Miles will keep you informed with in-depth and well-researched articles.

I subscribe to Keys Citizen and so should you. They have digital news and a good old-fashioned paper that is dropped off at your house 3 days a week. They are our local newspaper of record. Local reporters like Timothy O’Hara are first rate.

I subscribe to KONK Life and so should you. While they haven’t produced a weekly print edition since Covid, they do an amazing job of consolidating local news and presenting it in daily e-blasts and online. My “Streets for People” column appears there too.

FLKeysNews is another online source that you should keep in your repertoire.

If you live in the Lower Keys, pick up the News-Barometer at many locations. It’s free and covers issues and events in the Lower Keys and beyond.

If you are on Facebook, join the Reimagining Key West group. Started during Covid, they are by far THE most thoughtful place on the Internet for good information and discussion about the issues concerning all of us.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug my own Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown Facebook page, Twitter page and blog. If you want to follow what’s happening in transportation and downtown Key West development, these are your go-to sources.

3. Get involved/Talk to your City and County Commissioners

Keep links to your local elected officials handy so you can write and call them when needed. Here’s some links:

• City of Key West Mayor
• City of Key West Commissioners
• Board of County Commissioners
• Marathon City Council
• Islamorada Village Council
• City of Layton Mayor and Council Members
• Key Colony Beach Mayor and City Commission
• District 120 – Florida House of Representatives James Vernon “Jim” Mooney, Jr.
• District 39 – The Florida Senate, Senator Bryan Avila

The Canary Died. We Need to Listen and Act

The canary in the coal mine died when FKAA told us in no uncertain terms that our water system can’t handle any more people in the Keys. To protect our quality of life and better address all the problems we already agree are hurting us, (i.e., lack of affordable housing, finding workers, traffic and parking congestion, degradation of our nearshore waters, and more), we need to say “enough”! We’ve reached our capacity on visitors and residents. Everything we do going forward should be done in the context of preserving and protecting the paradise we have and not giving in to the greed and siren song of more is better.

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Streets for People / New “Locals” Multi-Use Paths Behind the Airport Move Closer to Reality, Maybe

Posted on March 17, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life newspaper on March 17 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

Three new multi-use paths behind the airport are moving closer to reality as City and County officials take the advice of the Parks and Recreation Board and use the City/County Hawk Missile Site/Higgs Beach land swap as a mechanism to get the process started. The City Commission approved the land swap agreement, negotiated between City and County staff that includes the trails on March 7. The County Commission has the agreement on its March 22 agenda. If, as expected, the County approves the agreement, then the hard work begins. That’s why we hedge our bet with a maybe, because working in an environmentally sensitive area, next to an airport means layers of rules, conditions, permits and bureaucracy, any one of which could derail the project, despite good intentions.

Trail number one would be a new “Salt Ponds Multi-Use Path” connecting the communities of Ocean Walk, Las Salinas, Seaside and Sunrise Suites to downtown via a safer and time saving short cut behind the airport that will shave 10+ minutes off the existing 30-minute bike commute. Another is the “Smathers Beach Multi-Use Path” connecting Flagler with a short-cut to the beach behind the Key West By the Sea condo. And yet a third multi-use mini path would provide a short-cut from Flagler via Riviera Street (not Drive) to Little Hamaca Park.

This is a big deal because it resurrects and makes real some old pathways that were used by locals a generation ago and fulfills some of the key visions of the City’s adopted Bike/Ped Plan. By making it easier and safer for workers to bike downtown and for locals in New Town to get to the beach and Little Hamaca Park it gives more people the option of ditching a car for these trips. And when more people choose to bike instead of drive, we all win by reducing traffic and parking congestion. But for these trails to become a reality, local residents and workers are going to have to demand the City and the County overcome the bureaucratic inertia built into a difficult project like this and insist we find ways to get it done.

How We Got Here

The 2019 Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan calls for building the Salt Ponds Trail, called the “Airport Connector” in the document, and the little short cut from Flagler via Riviera Street to Little Hamaca Park on page 65. The Salt Ponds Multi-Use Path cuts from access behind the Sunrise Suites to behind the backside of the Key West International Airport, with the ideal design, using a wide elevated concrete boardwalk where needed to traverse water and wetlands with limited impact of nature, to Government Road where it would cross Flagler Avenue at 7^th Street and then connect up with the Crosstown Greenway. The “Smathers Beach Connector” is found on page 69 of the Bike/Ped Plan. Both paths are described in detail, along with locals’ recollections of their origins here.

In 2021 the City’s then Multi-Modal Coordinator Tim Staub identified beginning design and planning for the “Salt Ponds” and “Smathers Beach” trails in 2022. That generated excitement in the community. In our story, What’s Old is New Again. Two New Bike Trails Take Us Back in Time to a Simpler Key West, April 30, 2021, we shared some locals’ stories about how these had all been informal paths back in the day and that Key West Bicycle Coordinator Jim Malcom had tried to revive and formalize them before his untimely death in 2008. Nothing came of Mr. Malcom’s Plans until people remembered it during community meetings and had it put in the Bike Plan. In our 2021 story we wrote:

“Former City Manager Greg Veliz was said to be a champion of these trails because it revives routes that many Conchs used to use to wander through the Salt Ponds.”

Despite Tim Staub putting the projects in his work plan, it looked like they may stall out because of how complicated the reality of building anything in Salt Ponds was proving to be. In our story, Airport’s Need for Additional City Land Could Help Spur Salt Ponds and Smathers Beach “Locals” Bike Trails, February 11, 2022 we discussed how the potential land swap between the County, wanting the City-owned Hawk Missile Site and the City, wanting the County-owned Higgs Beach, gave all the Salt Ponds trails renewed life.

City’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Leads

With the County wanting to swap land to help facilitate airport expansion, the City Commission tasked the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board with looking into and making recommendations on the land swap. The P&R Board had many meetings and discussions over a two-year period with the community about activating the HAWK area (over 60 acres) as a passive park and valuable asset to the City and have always included the “multi-use” paths as a key element. As one P&R Board member said to me: “These are more than just bike paths. They are recreational trails for walkers, runners, and all sorts of people to use to access outdoors and nature.”

The Board has been instrumental in ensuring the paths would become a reality by insisting that getting them constructed be included in any Inter-Local-Agreement (ILA) between the County and City for the land swap. Here’s how Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Chair Tiffany Pellicier put it:

“This is an exciting opportunity for the City and the County to work together to revitalize an area while also creating a safer space for our biking, walking and alternative transportation community. A lot of great work and visionary plans are readily available as a result of the City’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan as well as some positive preliminary correspondence between the County and the Department of Interior and National Park Service. The tricky part will be navigating the state, federal and environmental agencies throughout the permitting process. However, I’m confident and hopeful that both governing bodies will work in tandem to see this project to completion.”

City Approves Agreement, County Up Next and Then…

On March 7 the City Commission approved the ILA with the provision that their staff would provide the County with concept plans for the new trail within one year. Upon receipt of the plan, the County would have three years to move from concept to formal design, get all necessary approvals and construct the trail. Per the agreement, once the County approves the ILA, which has already been negotiated by staff, the clock will start ticking.

We’re told the Bike/Ped Plan itself already provides a good conceptual framework from which the process can begin. City staff has also prepared a $158,000 request to FDOT for a “Salt Ponds Pathways Feasibility Study” Transportation Alternative Program (TAP) grant to supplement the work already done in the Bike/Ped Plan with more specifics. Both sides have agreed they’ll be flexible on the exact timing, but the City Manager said she thought her staff would meet the one-year deadline to get concepts to the County.

At that point the County, “to the extent allowed by city, county, and federal laws and regulations governing the airport and the salt ponds” would then have three years to construct a path. To the extent that financing is available, more than one path could be done. If all goes well, we’re talking about spring/summer 2027 before these are done.

Residents Need to Vocally Support the Salt Ponds Multi-Use Pathways

Nothing good is easy. And these paths being built on land the U.S. Department of Interior gave the City attached with many conditions, that are in an environmentally sensitive area and next to an airport will prove complex. And expensive. As staff hit roadblocks and NIMBYS, naysayers and whatabouters come out of the woodwork, as they do for any project, it will be important that the locals these multi-use paths are intended for, speak up and say, “Yes, we want these, find a way to get it done.”

Speaker Bert Sise said at the March 7 City Commission meeting in speaking of the agreement: “…and yes put in bike paths from S. Roosevelt to Government Road so people from the condos can ride bikes instead of being on Flagler, which is a deathtrap and there’s no real good bike lanes on the promenades anymore.” Building the Salt Ponds Multi-Use Path will help these workers. And building all these “Locals” short-cut paths will make our island smaller and therefore more convenient and much safer to get around by bike. And that’s very good for all of us in so many different ways. Please let your City and County Commissioners know you support these paths too.

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Streets for People / One Year In Lama E-Scooters Are Proving to Be a Success. We Need to Make It Easier for Them to Expand

Posted on March 1, 2023     Leave a Comment

By Chris Hamilton. This story is cross posted in KONK Life newspaper on March 1 2023. Follow us at Friends of Car-Free Key West & Duval Street/Historic Downtown on Facebook and check out all our Streets for People stories here.

Last March we brought news of a gleaming new e-scooter (the stand-up kind) share service, starting in downtown Key West that whisks visitors around town in an eco-friendly way to shop, dine and visit attractions without need of a personal car, Uber, golf cart or loud, smoke spewing, gas-powered moped. The system, with the friendly name Lama, is the brainchild of local entrepreneur Marc Meisel, who has four stations with 48 scooters at his H2O Suites, Santa Maria Suites and Southwinds Motel properties. We test drove a scooter for a morning and loved it. One year later we’re happy to report that Lama has been a huge success.

According to Lama officials over 4,400 rides have been taken in the first year covering 18,000 miles and reducing about 2,600 vehicle trips on Key West’ streets saving all of us traffic and parking congestion headaches. Riders report going to attractions, beaches, shopping, and restaurants in support of our local economy. Best of all there have been zero accidents or injuries in a testament to the system’s deployment of numerous safety features.

Mr. Meisel says he’s enthusiastic about expanding the program to additional, mostly other hotel locations, throughout the City. And given their popularity he’d like to introduce e-bikes – they can fit into the same docks as the e-scooters – to further decrease the number of vehicles on our streets. But Mr. Meisel says they are facing challenges in expanding the program due to the strict regulations enforced by the City. We’d like to see City officials streamline the process for alternative modes and make it easier to get more people on bikes and scooters instead of defaulting to cars. Think about this. 28 percent of car trips are 1 mile are less. 40 percent are less than 2 miles and 50 percent of car trips are 3 miles are less. Getting more people to use alternatives to cars, especially for these short trips, will make our little island less congested, cleaner, greener, healthier, and more prosperous. Let’s dive into some of the details.

Simple, Elegant, Easy to Use

Here’s my notes on how the Lama system works from when I took my test ride: 

• Scooters are parked and charged at Lama charging racks located at Santa Maria Suites, Southwinds Motel and H2O Suites.
• Anyone, not just hotel guests, may use the system – as long as you’re 18 years of age and have a valid form of government identification and credit card.
• Riders utilize the Lama app to rent the scooters and are charged $9 hour or $36 max per day.
• You open your app, press “Scan & unlock”, and a camera opens up for you to scan the bar code on an individual scooter. Once verified, the scooter will unlock. You unplug the charger and away you go. It’s that easy. 
• The system enables the rider to “pause the ride,” as many times as they like, to shop, dine and visit attractions and lock the scooter to a bike rack. This “pause” prevents someone else from unlocking and thus using the scooter and is why it is considered a round trip instead of point-to-point rental. 
• At the end of the ride, you simply “Scan & lock” the bike the same way you unlocked it. And remember to plug in the charging cable. Easy breezy. 
• Helmets are available at the front desks. Note – I didn’t feel it necessary to wear one while riding the scooter, just as I don’t in riding my one speed bike around town. If you are going slow enough it just isn’t needed. 

Watch this video to see how the company explains the customer experience.

With the weight of the scooter in the battery at the bottom, the scooter feels grounded and sturdy. The footboard is wider than most scooters too – which makes it easy to get steady footing. You must push the scooter a bit before the throttle will engage, preventing it from jumping away from you. Using the throttle and hand brake are very intuitive. Within minutes I felt comfortable keeping up with traffic, weaving around potholes and stopping and starting.

Innovative Roundtrip Rental Solves Right-of-Way, Charging and “Abandoned Scooter Problems

Mr. Meisel saw a need to provide his guests with another alternative to get around in addition to the bikes they rent. But he realized that dockless scooters, which traditionally operate with the pickup and drop off transaction conducted on the street via an app, has been problematic in other cities. In fact, Key West doesn’t allow these kinds of operations in the City right-of-way, which has been the Achilles heel of several other failed attempts at Key West based private bikeshare, public bikeshare and Zipcar carshare.

In other cities across the country, traditional dockless rideshare e-scooter programs like Lime, Spin, Bird and Lyft, operate when a customer sees an e-scooter on the street and then uses an app to unlock it and go. Lama Mobility was designed to operate as a round trip rental, like the way bicycles are rented traditionally from a storefront or as we often see here in Key West, at a hotel.

Mr. Meisel said their system was designed this way because one of the biggest complaints of electric scooters in other cities is the problem of abandoned scooters’ littering sidewalks, parks, and other public spaces. The other problem is keeping those scooters charged.

By creating docking stations where the scooter is charged while it’s parked, it solves the charging problem. Putting the docking station on a hotel property where the user picks up AND returns the scooter to the station means they won’t be left somewhere else. That takes care of the problem of “abandoned” scooters littering sidewalks and it solves the Key West specific problem of moving the transaction off the City’s right-of-way too. 

Here’s how Marc Meisel explains how this has worked with the hotels:

“By hotels offering Lama e-scooters and having them conveniently located at a charging rack in their parking lot, guests of that hotel, if they drove or rented a car, do not need to use their cars, and can opt to use a Lama e-scooter while their vehicle is parked in the hotel parking lot during their stay. The other benefit of locating Lama e-scooters at hotels is that guests who rent the Lama’s will eventually return to the hotel. Therefore, the Lama’s are not littering public spaces throughout h city but instead being taken back to the hotels and put into their docking station to charge for the next customer. To date, with over 4,000 rides logged only 3 scooters were not returned to their Lama’s docking stations.”

Safety Education and Features Are Built Into the System

When I took my test ride a mom and two teenage kids asked where they could get these. It was pointed out that one must be 18 years old to use the system. When you download the app, the next step is to take a front and back picture of your driver’s license and then a selfie. Within a few seconds, the system verifies you have a valid permit and verifies you are the person with that license. This prevents fraud and is a good safety feature.

Safety education is built into the system so that riders are readily aware of how to operate the scooters and of the rules of the road. The app walks users through instructional/safety information and videos. That same information is then displayed on the charging rack monitors. There are bright front and back lights on the scooters, a loud bell and the device can’t go more than 15 mph. Let’s say that again because it is such an important point. The e-scooters can’t go more than 15 mph! All users must be 18 years of age.

As most of us are now aware, Key West prohibits e-bicycles and e-scooters on sidewalks except on the Multi-use paths or promenades on North and South Roosevelt, Bertha, and Atlantic. As part of the safety education and rules of the road on the app and at the station, Lama stresses to customers that you aren’t allowed to ride on the sidewalk. One gets the message loud and clear.

Additional Safety Features Can Be Added to the System

These cool scooters have a feature that allows the company to put a virtual fence around an area where the Lama scooter won’t be able to operate. For example, there’s a block of residential homes behind one of the hotels that asked for this. In theory it would allow the City to ask Lama to say, restrict the maximum 15 mph speed of the vehicles in certain zones to something less. For example, if wanted, you could set the maximum speed at 10 mph for heavily used areas like Duval Street. Or you could even have the scooter not be able to operate when it hit a certain zone like Mallory Square where you don’t want them mixing with pedestrians.

Survey Says Scooters Reduce Car Traffic

Lama emailed customers who used the system between March 4 and May 31 a 3-question survey. Here’s what they found out:

• 70 percent of the riders are hotel guests of the 3 properties.
• Over 60 percent of riders traveled to restaurants and bars and over 50 percent went shopping. Attractions and beaches were popular destinations too.
• 68 percent of riders would have used a personal vehicle, taxi or rideshare service if they didn’t have the Lama e-scooter to get around. 23 percent would have walked, and 4 percent would have biked.

Here’s an important point. While a little more than a quarter of users would have simply walked or rode a regular bicycle, 72 percent would have used their personal or rental vehicle, a taxi or rideshare company like Uber or rented a gas-powered scooter. THAT’S a lot of car trips taken off our congested little downtown streets.

Said Mr. Meisel of the results:

“Lama Mobility has proven to be a safe method of transportation that tourists have welcomed as an alternative method to using an Uber or their vehicle to explore Key West. As seen on the attached heat map, people have been using Lama e-scooters to visit attractions, explore, shop, and dine all over Key West (Old Town, New Town, and some locations in Stock Island). They have been exploring and shopping in an environmentally friendly way that has not been adding to the traffic, parking, or noise pollution problems we currently have with cars and gas-powered mopeds. Meanwhile, the hotels we serve have been applauded by their guests for providing a fun, eco-friendly way to get around. Many guests have commented that they would only have seen or done so much of the island with the scooters.”

Lama Is Part of the Solution So Let’s Get the Regulations Off Their Back and Let Them, And Others, Innovate to Make Our Island Better

It is no secret that we’re enthusiastic proponents of getting around by bike, walk and transit as a means of helping our island and especially our congested downtown prosper and be more people friendly. So, expanding Lama, especially since the City doesn’t have to pay a dime for any of it, seems like a no-brainer net public good. So why isn’t Mr. Meisel more quickly following up on year one success with expansion? Here’s how he explains it:

“I am enthusiastic about expanding the program and introducing Lama e-bikes to assist in helping reduce the issues in Key West revolving around automobiles, including traffic, parking, and noise pollution, to name a few. The City of Key West regulates what they call Recreation Rental Vehicles, which is what the Lama e-scooters fall under. It took over 9 months to go through the City of Key West’s approval process for the 48 Lama Mobility electric scooters. A lot of money is spent on legal fees, application fees, traffic studies and more. Each location requires a separate application, traffic study and more. You can’t walk in with an application, fulfilling all the requirements, and obtain a license like in many other jurisdictions. There is no guarantee that the City will allow any more as it was difficult to get these in place.”

He’s also leaving out the part that once he has his application, study and fees for each individual location initially approved by staff, they then have to be routed through a bunch of different departments for sign off and then the company has to walk these applications through Planning Board, perhaps HARC and then the City Commission. It’s not like the Lama Mobility Company wants to dispose of nuclear waste. They simply want to add more stations – on private property – and more bikes and scooters. A GOOD THING. That and their initial stations and scooters were approved once already. And this report looks like it would meet the requirements of a parking study that says they don’t contribute to more traffic, rather they reduce traffic.

Recent research from Carnegie Mellon University, among other sources, shows how replacing short car trips with bike and scooter trips can lead to less congestion. Remember those short trip stats we gave you above where half of all car trips are 3 miles or less? So getting people out of cars and into quiet, eco-friendly alternatives like the Lama e-scooters for these trips is a good thing. It nicely compliments efforts like the Duval Loop. It makes our downtown a more friendly, green, and prosperous place. 

Our question is WHY isn’t City Hall expediting these kinds of programs instead of overregulating them? Why aren’t we putting in more bike racks and bike lanes? Why aren’t we pedestrianizing more downtown streets? Why isn’t there more frequent service on our Duval Loop? Why aren’t we spending marketing money to educate visitors that they don’t need a car to get around? And why aren’t we properly managing our parking so that we direct short-term parkers to meters and longer-term visitors and workers to long-term lots and garages instead of letting them park for free in our neighborhoods? All these things, including e-scooter and e-bike share, would make our historic downtown and whole island healthy, green, sustainable, equitable, prosperous, affordable, and happier too. Thanks to smart people at Lama Mobility like Marc Meisel we have a path to progress.

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