Richard Clark, executive director of Monroe County Transit, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on with travel in the county.
Where does transportation stand in terms of state and federal funding?
Clark said, “In my conversations with FDOT they feel really good about where they are now. Mind you, they’ve got to work really hard, as we all do. You have to, in this climate, you have to justify every single penny you spend. They’re obviously looking a little differently now at how we spend, where we spend, why we spend, and FDOT, generally speaking, has done a really, really good job over the years. There’s a reason why they put five year plans funding in five year increments, and they look out 10 years and 20 years. There’s really not a lot of surprises. Which is by far the worst thing you can do is show up in Tallahassee and surprise the legislature or the governor. You don’t want to do that. So we’re in a really good place. FDOT continues to be a great partner for us. We always ask, and they seem to over deliver, which is absolutely wonderful. But we, as we move forward, we’re going to continue to work together.”
The transportation coordination committee has been meeting for a few months now.
Clark said it is “a committee of somebody from each of our elected bodies, county and municipality, and we’ve been working through a new list of priorities. The last list was about 183 different projects, and FDOT addressed in some way, shape, form or fashion, 75 of those, which is just an amazing number. So we are rebuilding our priority list. A few items are things that were on the old list. But for the most part, everyone is looking first at their local area, what do we need to see here? What’s important to us? How do we impact Overseas and other state roads? Then they were tasked with taking a step back and look at the county as a whole and say here’s where I think we can do some really quality things. So we got our first list of everyone who has done a tremendous job. Everyone should be really happy here in the Keys that that we’ve got elected officials who really engage and really do the work. They’re not just there a long way away from you, just being the elected official, they’re really doing the work that needs to be done, which is great. So some of them are big picture, like we want to ask FDOT to look into an intelligent transit system that allows them to monitor the lighting up and down the Keys, so that if there’s an accident or an event, they have the ability to cycle the lights differently and keep traffic flowing like you’re supposed to keep it flowing. So it’s a wonderful way to keep traffic flowing and keep safety going. A lot of what we talk about as we go through these priorities are bike and pedestrian safety, intermingling with US 1. There are many, many places where you have to cross US 1. What can we do to make those crossing safer? And we rely on FDOT to tell us that. We tell them these are our concerns, and then they say, okay, well, let’s look at how we make it safer. So you should expect to see some activity like that in Key West at the triangle, as soon as they’re signed off and done on South Roosevelt, they’re going to go right to doing a study at the triangle and seeing what if anything they can do to make that intersection safer and more efficient.”
The Freebee service and Conch Connect have been doing incredibly well.
Clark said, “They’re great models because it’s the same service delivery, but the people and the use for each municipality are so different, and it’s a really great way to say, okay, how do we slide the time back and forth? How do we look at where demand lies? Islamorada has a much bigger shared ride pool, but they use the service much more differently. So the service up there is used a little bit to get to and from work, but a lot more from going out doing errands. It’s more group activity based, and all the way in the Lower Keys and Key West and Stock, it’s far more local, 85% local, and a tremendous amount of people that are using it to go to and from work or to and from the grocery store. They’re different. I would expect us to see the same changes in Key Largo, the same changes in Marathon, Key Colony. It’s going to change based on how people use it and who lives there. Modern local service delivery is not a fixed route bus running through a neighborhood. Modern local service delivery is providing a true service to the people that live and work there, and allowing them to get where they need to get at the time they need to get there. Who knew we had food deserts in the Keys? People would go home after working all day and realize, okay, wait a minute. I’ve got to get to the grocery store somehow for diapers and baby formula. How do I do that? Now they can and so those are the services that people rely on every day and that’s the hole public transit needs to fill.”
Could that service be expanded to other parts of the Keys?
Clark said, “Our goal for the long haul has five areas. We’d love to add Key Largo, Marathon, Key Colony, all of which, again, we’ll do a little something different. But service that I think everybody so far that we’ve talked to as we travel up and down the Keys, everybody has an expectation they’ll see it, they’ll be able to use it, and it’ll make their lives better.”
What about the busses?
Clark said, “Our commuter system today, Miami Dade has a contractor that’s a service provider in the Upper, Middle Keys. They’re moving roughly 400,000 boardings a year, which probably equates to about a quarter of a million people a year in the Upper and Middle Keys. It’s just a tremendous number, and when they’re fully operational, when there’s no issues, seven vehicles, seven busses. They do a tremendous service for us and the amazing thing is that if we added busses and doubled that number of busses, that they would still be full. We’ve seen the demand. It’s truly standing room only in the morning. People can’t get on some of these busses, they’re so full. So we know there’s demand there and then in the Lower Keys, Key West to Marathon, we are looking at how we between the city of Key West and the county, how we work together to maximize the services we can provide down here, and we’d like to slide a few more busses onto the commuter line up and down Overseas and then maybe expand Freebee to allow the local demand that’s been here for quite some time. When we jumped into the Freebee game, one of our big concerns was, are we going to impact Key West Transit service? And that hasn’t happened at all. Not a single ride have they lost. So there’s that much demand. So we’re all working in concert. It’s a slow, very deliberate process. I don’t want anybody to think we’re just going to dive in and make change right away. We don’t make change just to make it and we want to make sure we do everything right. I’ve always told everybody the government is built to run slowly. We’re using taxpayer dollars to do this, and so if we do it right, and showed the level of stewardship we should, it should take time, and we should have a process, because it’s your money. So we’re getting there. Every day, we learn a little something that’ll make it better. I think hopefully in the near future, everybody will see better service.”
When an incident happens, does Monroe County Transit get in on the discussions?
Clark said, “We are kept in the loop and asked to forward that information. Those decisions are made at the public safety level, rightfully so. It’s a myriad of people that are all having to work together to make it safe, and they’re always going to err on the side of caution. So we don’t worry about their decision making at all. We’re just happy they do such a good job communicating with us.”