The Key West public transit system is akin to the Energizer's pink bunny . . . it keeps going and going and going. Sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Nevertheless, on some of the scheduled runs, a passenger can wait as much as 60 minutes for a bus to arrive.
"Would you wait that long to get somewhere on a two-by-four mile island?" asked Mira Hernandez, the city's director of transportation. "I wouldn't."
But John Wilson has no choice.
"I'm visually impaired, and a taxi cab— which I can't afford to use regularly— is my only other option," said Wilson, a resident of Stock Island where buses are scheduled with longer intervals than in Old Town. "I've waited more than an hour for a bus that never showed up, while the bus on the Rreen route can be more than ten minutes early."
Wilson says lack of consistency is more problematic than a sparsely traveled bus route. "If I know the bus will only come on the hour, I'll be there at that time, but drivers who set their own breaks or go to lunch whenever they want to go is impossible to live with," he said.
Hernandez says she understands the problem, and recently established a Quality Control Coordinator position to "make sure that none of our 15 full-time drivers set their own schedules. But it's hard to find people who will work past the first paycheck," said Hernandez. "And sometimes our senior people tend to get stagnant. My job is to stir things up."
Hernandez says a recent death and several employee turnovers have forced the new quality control coordinator into a part-time position; for the time being, he also drives buses. Eventually it will be a full-time job, and Hernandez says that since she took over the transportation department two years ago, complaints are down significantly.
"The Downtown bus frequency is 15 to 20 minutes, and by July 2001, we'll have eight new Gilligs that can each carry 26 passengers," she said. "These buses will be added to our existing fleet of 12 buses, which aren't always in service because repairs take their toll on some of the buses, like our old, 1987 diesels.
"I saved $140,000 when I cut out the Park `n Ride shuttle," said Hernandez. "Still, public buses go by the parking garage four times each hour, and our five year goal is to have all the schedules throughout the entire system on 15 to 20 minute intervals."