I'm beyond tired of how bad it is to bike here. I've been tons of places where riding a bike is safe like Savannah, Ga, New York, NY, Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia Washington, and Portland, Or. All these places are plainly not dangerous places to ride a bike. Living in places like this for five years and coming back here left me so mad at how little government does here to fix anything that I reached out to Strong Towns to become a Chattanooga local conversation founder after running to brick walls with the established groups in Chattanooga.
Established organizations in Chattanooga for supporting urban development, equity, and safety have repeatedly failed to do anything other that advocate for the big projects as the suburbs continue to expand with no transit or bike lanes and the existing neighborhoods remain with 1950's infrastructure and zoning that leaves them no way to grow up into the 21st century.
The world of transportation is transforming with micro mobility at the top of nearly every city's plan and Chattanooga is still stuck in Olgiati's 1950's era plan of city destruction for cars and still hasn't turned a corner towards sustainability and safety.
The city needs to start taking direct action to address this ongoing carnage of car on bike/ pedestrian violence they are supporting.
James Rogers
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In response to James Roger’s commentary on the horrendous bike safety in Chattanooga, I’ll say this; infrastructure, enforcement and connectivity are the ways forward.
The majority of Chattanoogans, both native and newcomer, are all horrified by the lack of traffic enforcement in Chattanooga. This would also be helped by road diets and slowing techniques that cost a fraction of any departmental city budget to set in place.
We have formed a Chattanooga MicroMobility Action Committee to actively press the city to bring real changes to our deadly streets. We are advocating for pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, mopeds, one wheels, e boards etc.to push for safe streets.
Too long we have been given minimal attention that doesn’t result in real changes. Too many times officials talk about why safer streets can’t be done as opposed to figuring out how to make it happen.
We are with you James. Please join us in planning a bicycle/pedestrian summit in front of City Hall to show our numbers and demand changes now. We also have the backing of other notable organizations moving the needle forward on MicroMobility. Please contact us at EmPowerChatt@gmail.com
Show your numbers. Let’s us know your passion for this to be the turning point to make Chattanooga into what we all know it can be.
John Mathna