How to get around St. Thomas

Rent a car: the default on St. Thomas

Every way round the island, with the one number a villa guest plans on, each from the operator's or the authority's own page on the date shown; the measured minutes are ours.

A car is the answer for almost every villa on the island. We measured the drive to town, to the ferry and to the nearest beach from all 23 areas we list, with the terrain around each, in September 2026, and every one came out car required or recommended; 13 of the 23 measure steep. Driving is on the left, per the CDC's page for travelers, and the airport to Red Hook is 36 minutes without traffic, 12 to the Charlotte Amalie waterfront, 8 to Crown Bay Marina.

Avis, Budget, Hertz and Enterprise have desks at Cyril E. King Airport, per the Virgin Islands Port Authority as of October 2026, and the local companies meet flights or deliver. The car-rentals page lists every operator with what a Jeep costs and what the desk asks for; the driving guide covers keeping left, Jeep or sedan on the hill roads, and whether a St. Thomas rental may cross to St. John.

Taxis, shared vans and safari buses

A St. Thomas taxi is usually a van, and usually shared. Only multi-destination vans carrying 8 to 12 passengers serve the airport, per the Port Authority as of October 2026, and the fare is per person and by destination on the Virgin Islands Taxicab Commission's tariff, the one from October 2022 still being the latest: the airport to Charlotte Amalie $11 for one rider and $9 each for two or more, to Red Hook $23 and $17. An official taxi has a dome light and TP on its plate, per the Port Authority. The open-air safari buses are taxis too, used for tours and the dollar rides along the main roads, and the Virgin Islands Taxi Association's own safaris carry up to 25.

The tradeoff: no meter, and a shared van drops each party in turn, so a ride across the island takes longer than the drive. The taxis page prints the fares from town and the airport, what bags and night hours add, and who to call from a villa.

Is there public transportation in St. Thomas? The $2 bus

VITRAN, the Department of Public Works' bus, is $2 a ride as of its fares page effective July 18, 2024, free for seniors and people with disabilities, $1.50 for students with a school ID. Its St. Thomas routes run from Contant, west of town, to Red Hook via Smith Bay, to Bovoni and to Tutu via Tutu Park Mall, and from the hospital stop to Bordeaux, per the routes page as of October 2026; it publishes no timetable there. The dollar ride, a flat-fare run along the same main roads in safari buses, is set by the Taxicab Commission and last raised in August 2024, and a safari pulling into a bus stop is usually one. By our read the bus suits a resident's commute and a guest with a loose day, not a villa in the hills or a beach with a return to catch: the routes stay on the main roads, and a villa is rarely on one.

Ferries from St. Thomas, and the one to Water Island

The ferry is how St. Thomas reaches everywhere else. Red Hook to Cruz Bay, St. John, is 20 minutes and $8.15 an adult, hourly until 11:30 pm; the car barge from the same end of the island takes the car for $65 one way, last sailing 7 pm; Charlotte Amalie sends boats to Cruz Bay, to Road Town on Tortola in 50 minutes, and to St. Croix once a day at 3 pm, all on the operators' pages as of October 2026. The ferries page has every route in one table with its last boat.

Water Island is the exception to the car rule: no bridge, no car ferry, and the Water Island Ferry from Crown Bay Marina is the only way on, about 10 minutes, $20 round trip for a visitor, hourly with a last boat at 6 pm. Golf carts meet it at Phillips Landing, and the Water Island page has the week there.

Can you walk from the cruise port to Charlotte Amalie?

You can, and it is further than the harbour view suggests. From the Havensight pier the walk into Charlotte Amalie is 51 minutes by our measurement; from the Crown Bay terminal 40 minutes, both measured 2026-10-09 on the walking route along the waterfront. The taxi tariff from either pier into town is a few dollars a head, and the ride is 12 minutes from Havensight. Once in town, the historic streets and Frenchtown are flat and walkable; outside it, by our read, the island is not built for walking: hill roads without sidewalks, and no bike lanes, so a bicycle is a poor way round.

What we did not find: Uber, Lyft and scooters

We found no Uber or Lyft service on St. Thomas: neither company's own city list named the Virgin Islands when the taxis page checked on 2026-10-09, and that page carries the full answer with what was checked. No scooter or motorcycle rental published a current page we could cite, so none is listed. The practical close: book the car before the flight, in high season weeks ahead, and keep the taxi association's number for the night the car stays at the villa.