The People Are Already Here. Let’s Make Room for Them. Dinner on a downtown Key West sidewalk: walkers squeezing by single file, and parked cars an arm’s length away. The City’s own counts show that in the evening, more than two in three people on Duval are on foot. Yet on the side streets around it, sidewalks get about a third of the street or less, and parked cars alone take up about 30%. Two local restaurant owners are already asking: why not swap a few of those parking spaces for parklets, small curbside platforms with seating, tables and plants to as one said: “slow down local traffic, and enhance the walking experience for locals as well as our visiting tourists.” In the story at the link we walk through our streets as a community asset, what the data shows about who’s out there, why our sidewalks feel so crowded, what parklets are and what it would take to try a few. carfreecities.com/2026/10/15…

CITY LOOKING INTO TDC FUNDING FOR DUVAL LOOP Good news for downtown: the City is now looking into using tourist tax dollars to bring back the Duval Loop. At last month's budget hearing, staff said TDC funding for the Loop couldn't be done. This week, Finance Director Christina Bervaldi told us she's asked the County Attorney for a definitive written opinion on whether it can. Good on her for pursuing it. The County Attorney has already said tourist-serving transit can qualify, and the City's own files make the case for the Loop: a route map lined with attractions, at least 50 hotels and guesthouses within about a block, and marketing that said "Get there. Have fun. Get back." And if tourist dollars cover the Loop, local money can go to better bus service for the people who live and work here. Read the full story: carfreecities.com/2026/10/03…

Another Year, No New Transit Money in the Keys. City and County budgets passed with no new transit money — the predictable result of treating buses as charity for the few instead of infrastructure for everyone. What this means, the TDC controversy and what we can do to fix it here: carfreecities.com/2026/09/17…

We Know How to Fund Transit. Next Week's Budget Meetings Would Be a Good Time to Start. The side of this bus says RIDE FREE AND FREQUENT. It ran its last Duval Loop on December 31. Key West Rides and the Workforce Express end in the upcoming fiscal year, replaced by an hourly Island Hopper from 6 am to 6 pm. Stock Island's south side loses service entirely. This wasn't supposed to happen again. Twice in the past year, City staff told commissioners exactly how to fund transit locally — tourist taxes, cruise ship fees, new parking revenue. Neither the City nor the County budget contains a dollar of it. We can fix this at the County budget hearings are September 9 and 14. The City meets September 10 and 23. Read how in our story at the link 👉 carfreecities.com/2026/09/03…

US1 Radio’s Nick Wright Discusses Potential Loss of Transit on Stock Island’s South Side With Chris Hamilton On Tuesday, August 25 Chris Hamilton joined Nick Wright on his Evening Edition show to talk about the "Transit Erased on Stock Island’s South Side – Can It Be Saved?" article published on August 20, 2026. Listen to the interview here: carfreecities.com/2026/09/01…

Transit Erased on Stock Island’s South Side – Can It Be Saved? The City's FY27 budget drops the two services that reach County-side Stock Island and replaces them with an Island Hopper that never crosses into the residential south side where much of our workforce lives. There's a fix on the table — the City priced it at about $500,000 a year and invited the County in. So far, nobody's picked up the ball. The County's budget hearings on September 9 and 14 are the last chance. Full story — the history, the emails, the money, and why this feels like déjà vu from last summer: carfreecities.com/2026/08/20…

Key West wants to blow up its bus system again — and the workers who keep this island running lose the most. The City's proposed FY27 budget scraps Key West Rides and the Workforce Express and replaces them with the "Island Hopper" — one giant loop around the island, once an hour, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. No more Duval Loop. Nothing for the County side of Stock Island, where so much of our workforce lives. And a last bus so early it's useless to anyone working a dinner shift. Key West Rides isn't being cut because it failed. The transit director told commissioners it's being cut because it's “too popular” to afford. Meanwhile the two routes the City left alone — the Duval Loop and the Lower Keys Shuttle — are the two that bounced back after COVID. The ones they keep reinventing never do. You can't build ridership on a system people have to relearn every three years. The full story “Meet the Island Hopper. You Won’t Meet It Often.” — a decade of transit whiplash, what's really in this budget, and what the City and County could do about it before October — here: 👉 carfreecities.com/2026/07/25…

The Tropic went dark on June 28 — but someone still shows up every single day to turn the lights on. This week I followed House Manager Greg Disney-Britton on his rounds at a closed movie theater, and found out why a rotating crew of Tropic Cinema staff keeps the place warm all summer. It's a story about a beloved downtown cinema at a crossroads, the history that brought them to this point, the headwinds they face, the Tennessee Williams Theatre team stepping up to save it, and why a walkable downtown Key West needs its anchors. Join us on this journey of hope at the link: carfreecities.com/2026/07/18…

U.S. Radio 1's Nick Wright interviews Friends of Car-Free Key West' Chris Hamilton about rebuilding Key West Plaza and the drop In Key West’s @peopleforbikes City Ratings - and how these things are tied together... Listen here: carfreecities.com/2026/07/06…

Key Plaza could be a #Publix with one or two stories of workforce housing on top. Instead we're getting Boca. The plan (top) submitted to rebuild Key Plaza — the 19-acre Publix center at Roosevelt and Kennedy that used to house a Kmart — is just a nicer and better-drained strip mall with parking out front and retail in back, indistinguishable from anything on the mainland. And not a single home. On the island with the worst housing crisis in Florida. Why not put some Key West style workforce housing there like in the bottom pic of Duval? The good news: it's only the first step in a long approval process, and there's still time to ask for better. Here's the whole story: “Key Plaza Could Be Key West. They're Giving Us Boca” carfreecities.com/2026/06/27…

Key West just dropped to #3 in Florida for biking. And that's not the bad news. PeopleForBikes.org new ratings put us at 63 — still top 8% of 3,000+ U.S. cities. But the score slipped for a reason worth your attention. This year's new rubric combines street speed with bike infrastructure. The resulting Key West "stress map" lines up almost exactly with the University of Florida's Safety Action Plan map of Key West where people actually crash. Two studies. Different methods. No shared data. Same streets. - The danger spots for bikes are the danger spots for cars and walkers too - A walkable, bikeable island is what sets us apart. If 63 is good, imagine how we'd stand out if we really tried - We've already got the plans to fix it, we just need to fund them If it's unsafe for bikes, it's unsafe for everybody. Read our story "Key West's Bike Score Slipped - and It's Telling Us Something About Safety for Everybody" here: carfreecities.com/2026/06/20…

Eighty-five million photos. The most photographed corner in Florida. The Mount Rushmore of Key West. So how did we end up with a design that pleases nobody — not the engineer who drafted it, not the neighborhood that asked for it, not the visitors lined up in traffic to get the shot? The City Commission paused this project on May 7. June 4 is the chance to get it right. In our story at the link, "Key West's Mount Rushmore Deserves a Real Plaza, Not a Street With an Appendage," we walk through what the residents put on the record in 2021, the great plaza the City designed with them, how it got rolled back, where the project stands now, and what we should do on June 4: carfreecities.com/2026/05/30…

150 new apartments at our downtown Seaport. Yay! 220 parking spaces. Why? The City just approved The Lofts at Trumbo. 150 deed-restricted apartments for teachers and school staff in the middle of our historic downtown. A housing win for workers. And a win for a more vibrant, locals-focused downtown. But homes this central shouldn't be this car-dependent. The project needs more bike parking and more and better transit. That's the missing transportation half of affordability done right. Only then will the new residents be able to go car-lite or car-free and really reduce their expenses. Join us in exploring how and why in our story “The Lofts at Trumbo: A Win for Workers and Our Downtown – Here’s How To Make It Even Better” here: carfreecities.com/2026/05/23…

Housing Plus Transportation: The Affordability Math Nobody’s Doing Why the second-biggest bill in your household budget is the affordability lever our local governments can actually pull: It's not the gas. It's the $13,596 a year the typical Key West household spends on transportation. In Monroe County, $15,209. That's 56% and 58% of a household's expenses when combined with housing. 👇 Learn how Key West and Monroe can address the transportation half of affordability here: carfreecities.com/2026/05/02…

Here's a number that should stop you in your tracks... Less than half of one percent of The Florida Keys and Key West residents use public transit to get to work. Not because they don't want to. Because a bus that comes every 90 to 120 minutes — and stops running before many dinner shifts end — isn't something you can build your workday around. So everyone drives. And in the Florida Keys, where gas prices are among the highest in Florida, that forced car ownership adds up fast. It isn't just fuel costs. Add Florida's highest-in-the-nation auto insurance rates, a car payment, maintenance, and parking — and you're looking at $800 to $1,000 a month in transportation costs. On top of Keys housing. On top of everything else. A monthly Keys bus pass? $75. Now ask yourself: what could your household do with the money saved if not every adult needed a car just to get to work? Better transit isn't just a transportation argument. It's an affordability argument. It's a housing argument. It's an argument about whether working people can actually afford to live and work in the Florida Keys. Read the full story at the link. carfreecities.com/2026/04/18…

The Lower Keys Shuttle: From Workhorse to Racehorse One road. Fifty miles. Here's the case for transforming the bus into a transit spine worthy of our community. Imagine 30-minute service from 4am to 2 am, 7 days a week instead of the current 90-120 minute waits. A game changer for workers, tourists and residents alike. Here's how: carfreecities.com/2026/04/18…

Healthy Alternatives to the Rejected Downtown Parking Garage Our historic downtown is the economic engine of Key West — the golden goose. It sets us apart from every car-choked, strip-mall-dominated place on the Florida mainland. Here's 7 things that should happen instead of a garage: keysnews.com/opinion/columns…