CARTA is still on schedule to start the long-anticipated service to the Enterprise South Industrial Park on May 3, Executive Director Lisa Maragnano said Tuesday at a public meeting held to provide an update to plans for the future of the transit system in Chattanooga and to gather suggestions from citizens that use it.
CARTA operates the area’s bus system, Care-A-Van which provides transportation to the disabled, the Incline Railway and the Chattanooga Parking Authority.
The informational meeting dealt primarily with the city’s buses, which had 1,758,992 riders in 2014. Ms. Maragnano said the new route to Enterprise South is being added to the 13 fixed routes that the system currently has. The new route has been designed to accommodate Volkswagen and 12 other companies in the vicinity, including Amazon Fulfillment Center and the Hamilton County Department of Education.
During planning for the new route, shift changes for each of the companies were taken into consideration. The outbound trips will originate downtown at 4th and Market Street and travel to the Bonny Oaks and Hickory Valley Road area via I-75. The timing was set up to get people back to town as the last shifts end by leaving at 4:45 p.m. heading toward downtown. The outbound trips will start at 6:05 a.m. to get the workers to the businesses when the first shifts begin. All of the other routes that are in operation will hook up with this new one. It is expected that the Enterprise South route will be tweaked as needed after being put into service.
Another new undertaking is a multi-modal study that started in February and is expected to be complete by the end of 2015. This pertains to the ways that people get from one place to another using more than one mode of transit, such as walking or driving to a public transit facility. The research that is being done will help determine if the people that utilize this type of transportation would prefer one large or two smaller transportation centers. A public meeting will be held on April 30 at the Chattanooga Choo Choo to get citizen input on this issue.
People participating in the discussions at the Public Library on Tuesday night had two overriding themes, said Steve Jett, chairman of the CARTA board of directors, as he addressed the areas of concern. One was a request to provide bus service to the smaller communities surrounding Chattanooga, such as Red Bank, East Ridge, Collegedale and Soddy Daisy. In reply, Mr. Jett said that the system served around a dozen towns until sometime in the mid 1980’s to mid 1990’s. He said in order for communities in the area to be served by buses, they have to fund part of the service. He said with demands for public funds, difficult choices had to be made and the small cities chose not to participate in CARTA. He encouraged the people wanting service to make that point to the municipal governmental officials.
The second general comment heard repeatedly was the need for bus service on weekends, especially on Sunday, at times to get people to and from church. Mr. Jett said that too is a budget issue. He said that CARTA is constantly doing a balancing act with limited funds, trying to provide the most service for the available resources. There are fewer riders on the weekends, making it inefficient to operate the buses, he said.