Key West's Park `n Ride garage has been a controversial entity since its inception in 1995. Bring more cars into Old Town? Initially, it lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as it remained virtually unused for years.
So when Key West Department of Transportation (KWDoT) Manager Myra Hernandez said in a November 10 KWTN interview that "I saved $140,000 each year when I cut out the Park `n Ride shuttle" a follow up was in order.
If Federal and State Department of Transportation grants for the parking garage were contingent upon "parking and riding" as City Commissioners professed in the mid-1990's, how was the shuttle eliminated?
"I'd say good management on Myra's part," said Assistant City Manager, John Jones. "You know how that bureaucratic mumble-jumble goes— there are always catches to Federal money; there is no such thing as free money— and when Myra took over the city's Department of Transportation, she convinced the Feds we could make sound changes tied in with our regular bus service."
The Park `n Ride garage on Grinnell Street was originally planned to be located on Jose Marti, near Bayview Park— so the "ride" part made more sense. "We had problems with that location from the start— today it would be a subterranean garage because it would have sunk— and when the location was changed to Grinnell Street in Old Town, the `ride' part of the grant's designation didn't change," said Jones.
"We still had to furnish a shuttle, even though people who parked there didn't have very far to walk."
A problem, of course, was that many who were parking in the garage were walking, rather than riding the shuttle— even though the City tried to encourage bus riding by charging parking garage customers more if they said they were going to walk rather then ride.
The two Blue Bird shuttle busses purchased with $270,000 of grant money in 1998 have now been absorbed into the city's regular bus fleet, and under Hernandez's direction, a bus is scheduled to stop at the Park `n Ride garage every 15 minutes.
"When it's really busy, a shuttle is dedicated to the garage," said Jones. "And the garage is pretty busy these days. What used to cost us $135,000 a year is starting to pay for itself."
Although Jones says the garage is officially called "Old Town Garage", some things never change: "The Park `n Ride signs are going to be with us a long time."