Key West slips to No. 3 in Florida for biking safety

Key West’s bike network still carries residents, workers and visitors across a small island city built around short trips, but its latest score shows where that system is fraying. PeopleForBikes ranked Key West third in Florida with a 63, a number that speaks less to a single bad street than to the daily pressure riders feel on the corridors that connect neighborhoods, downtown businesses and the crossings feeding U.S. 1.

PeopleForBikes’ 2026 City Ratings now evaluate more than 3,000 U.S. cities, using a Bicycle Network Analysis that measures how well bike routes connect people to everyday destinations such as jobs, schools, parks, grocery stores and essential services. In the national comparison, Queens, New York, also scored 63, while Seattle reached 66 and Minneapolis 68, a sign that the top tier remains tight and that small changes in network quality can move a city up or down.

In Key West, the drop lines up with the kind of street stress that transportation planners have been flagging for years. Local analysis connects the decline to crash hotspots identified in University of Florida safety work, which relies on annual crash snapshots rather than broad averages to pinpoint where danger concentrates. That matters in Monroe County, where Monroe County Engineering Services maintains the county’s pedestrian and bike paths, but U.S. 1 sits under FDOT jurisdiction and remains the spine of travel through the Keys.

The city has not been standing still. Key West adopted a citywide Comprehensive Safety Action Plan in March 2026, tying the island to a Vision Zero goal of zero roadway fatalities and serious injuries by 2035. The plan is meant to cut fatal and serious injury crashes for pedestrians, bicyclists, micromobility users, transit riders and motorists alike, building on the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan approved in 2019.

FDOT says Florida’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Strategic Safety Plan, updated in October 2021, is the state’s five-year implementation plan to reduce serious and fatal pedestrian and bicycle crashes through data-driven investments. Monroe County transportation planning documents also include a U.S. 1 Transportation Master Plan with short-, mid- and long-term safety and mobility actions, underscoring that Key West’s bike safety problems are part of a broader countywide transportation challenge.

For Key West, the stakes go beyond a ranking. The city’s bike-friendly image depends on whether daily riders can move safely and reliably through the same streets that support commuting, delivery work and tourism, and whether the most stressed corridors can be made safer before the next serious crash.