All good Chattanoogans are dismayed at the news that CARTA may go "out of business." Whatever will we do without enormous, loud, empty buses clogging up our very narrow streets? The opportunity cost will be too great. How else will homeless prostitutes be CArried Rapidly Through the Area? How else will I get the opportunity to receive a structured settlement from a public transportation company? I'll have to go to Atlanta, by bus or rail, of course.
As a poor person I will tell you: people don't ride CARTA because the city is obscenely and hilariously filthy and dangerous, not because the buses haven't yet installed this month's fashionable cashless payment system.
CARTA is said to haul three million trips a year on a budget of almost $30 million.
Has anyone checked in on CARTA's administrators lately? If they can't make a bus service function on $10 per trip, I'm not entirely sure they can feed and clothe themselves. It's times like these where I wish I may, I wish I might, that our City Council was a little more bright.
Chris Wicker