Lisa Maragnano
photo by Gail Perry
Map showing where one would like it to be located
photo by Gail Perry
Red stickers show where one lives and green stickers show where one works
photo by Gail Perry
CARTA hosted a public meeting Thursday night to get public input on a Multimodal Transportation Center that is being proposed for Chattanooga. The goal of this center is to create a hub where all modes of transportation comes together and are made easily accessible. This transportation center would create a gateway for the city with a goal of enhancing the image and effectiveness of public transportation as well as serving as a catalyst for economic development.
The public meeting provided those in attendance, the opportunity of letting their wants and needs for public transit be known. Colored stickers were used by the participants to indicate the choices they considered the most important as the new center is being developed.
A vision for the multimodal center includes items such as providing safe and convenient connections of different travel modes. The importance of the location of this hub as well as which connections to workplaces and other places that people need to go on a regular basis are also among the items that CARTA has considered in the planning phase of the project. Amenities such as retail spaces and restaurants may be included in the center.
Those participating in the study marked the priorities of transportation modes they would like to have available at this new center. They were also asked to choose which amenities would be the most desirable. Possibilities of the transportation modes include local, regional or interstate buses, local or interstate rail service, taxis, vehicle and bike share service, and parking for vehicles and bikes.
Among the amenities being considered are indoor and outdoor waiting areas, ticket kiosks, a CARTA customer service area, community space, restaurants, police and emergency services on site, retail space and public art.
People were also asked to choose their highest priorities for the facility. Among the choices were more frequent service, service to more area places, more amenities such as bus shelters, arrival message signs, benches and lighting, more fare payment options, extended hours of service, and connections to other transportation modes.
Lisa Maragnano, executive director for CARTA said there will be two more public meetings in the near future, each will be feeding on the previous one. These will gather more input about developing improvements to existing CARTA service as well as formulating decisions for the proposed Multimodal center.
Additional information on the project as well as an on-line survey can be found at http://www.MTCstudy.org.