Car Key Replacement in Tucson, AZ

Losing the key away from home

Suppose the key vanishes after a day on campus, an evening on Fourth Avenue or a shift downtown. The University of Arizona's main campus covers 380 acres and 179 buildings about a mile northeast of downtown, and the 3.9-mile Sun Link streetcar line ties it to the Main Gate and Fourth Avenue districts, downtown and the Mercado District. Until a new key exists, the car stays wherever you left it, so what its parking spot allows matters.

The car keeps sitting

Park Tucson runs six garages with more than 3,000 covered spaces and five surface lots with nearly 1,000 spaces, and the city says its garages and lots and the university's are all within walking distance of the streetcar. For a car in one of them, note which garage and which floor. A car at a meter faces a different clock: Section 20-203 of the city code lets the city boot or impound a vehicle whose owner has three or more unpaid civil parking infractions. A car that has to sit for days can pick up tickets, so keep track of the days.

A Park Tucson permit belongs to the vehicle, not to the key. The city says permits are vehicle specific, cannot change hands, and that a non-hanging permit goes on the lower left corner of the rear windshield. A new key changes none of that, but the permit does not cover a different car you borrow in the meantime.

A spare before the next storm

The National Weather Service's Tucson monsoon page puts an extra set of car keys in its recommended disaster kit. Cutting a spare from a key that still works is far simpler than starting again with none.

Details about the car

• year, make, model and color
• the VIN as printed on the registration, plus proof the car is yours, such as the title
• the car's location: a garage name and floor, or the street and cross street of a meter or permit block
• the type of key it was: a plain metal blade, a head with a remote in it or a push-start fob
• whether any working key or spare survives, and whether the missing one might be sitting inside the car

A key you can see through the glass is a car lockout matter. A fob that is in hand but dead is covered under key fob programming. For more on the city, see the Tucson page.