CARTA works with East Ridge transportation needs

EAST RIDGE, Tenn. (WDEF) – With thousands of cars on Chattanooga streets every day, it’s sometimes overlooked that many residents use, and need, public transportation. The city of East Ridge has been working with CARTA to fill the gaps in service to that community. But CARTA needs more information on where and why.

The first public meeting several months ago in East Ridge, but CARTA would like to hear more about what’s needed.

The Executive Director of CARTA Lisa Maragnano states, “We got a lot of great input from the folks that attended, and this resulted in putting a survey monkey out with the City of East Ridge…that’s available now on their website, and trying to get more input..there’s questions on there we’d like answered from the residents as well as business owners.”

East Ridge wants that information also. The city leaders want to tie expanded service in with more infrastructure improvement things like sidewalks as well.

Amanda Miller with East Ridge Community Involvement says “Right now, uh, we have very limited ridership for CARTA. We got a grant ..We partnered with CARTA..they applied for it..and that allowed CARTA to have a few stops on Ringgold road..go all the way to Camp Jordan and pickup riders there and to take them either to Amazon or, uh, industrial parkway and get to jobs at Volkswagen as well.”

Some bus services are a little harder to plan.

“A lot of the folks would like some more of the services within the neighborhood…but not by a fixed route..that would be more of a small neighborhood …Like a number 5, number 6, which are neighborhood route,” says Lisa Maragnano, Executive Director of CARTA.

Not everyone wants to go full speed ahead.

Amanda Miller explains, “I saw a lot of comments on Facebook..uh, talking about taxes being raised to do that…but that’s not what we want to do. We want to make sure that with the para-transit that the elderly and disabled are taken care of first…and then secondly uh take care of any of the other riders that may want to utilize CARTA to get to jobs, to get to doctor’s appointments..to get to uh shopping and other destinations.”