Downtown parking rate going up and covering more hours
Chattanooga, TN (WDEF) – Downtown workers, shoppers and park visitors need to get ready to dig a little deeper into their pockets.
Brent Matthews works as the CARTA Director of Parking. He said, "The rates are going from 75 cents to a dollar throughout downtown."
It marks the first rate increase for CARTA since 2008.
David Schilling lives in Atlanta but visits Chattanooga frequently. He said, "It looks like Chattanooga’s doing a lot of stuff, as far as improving the city, so if it goes towards helping improve the city than I’m all for it."
Matthews added, "All the parking funding goes back into more technology for the parking, it goes into funding the shuttle, it goes into us also being able to help with garages. A lot of the development that’s going on downtown is going to need parking."
Parking will soon be enforced until 6:00pm, instead of the current 4:30pm cut-off. And no more free parking on Saturdays.
Beverly Barton lives in Chattanooga. She said, "Saturdays you could come down here and bring your grandchildren to play, no you have to pay to park. I mean, you’ve got all these parking places and they want to charge us for this."
Matthews explained, "If you go downtown on a Saturday, you’re going to find that a lot of the spaces are taken before any body even comes to town. That’s employees taking the spaces, so that’s one of the reasons we felt like Saturday enforcement was probably a good next step."
All of these new changes went into effect on September first, but they’re not being enforced just yet.
Matthews said, "For the extended times, for the 4:30 to 6:00 and for the Saturdays we’re going to issue warnings for the first month just so people can kind of get used to it, because I know it’s something new and they’re not used to paying for the meters at those times."
Matthews said another future step for the downtown will be shared parking.
That is, garages that are only daily parking right now for people working downtown will have to become multi-use for residents at night.
Brent Matthews works as the CARTA Director of Parking. He said, "The rates are going from 75 cents to a dollar throughout downtown."
It marks the first rate increase for CARTA since 2008.
David Schilling lives in Atlanta but visits Chattanooga frequently. He said, "It looks like Chattanooga’s doing a lot of stuff, as far as improving the city, so if it goes towards helping improve the city than I’m all for it."
Matthews added, "All the parking funding goes back into more technology for the parking, it goes into funding the shuttle, it goes into us also being able to help with garages. A lot of the development that’s going on downtown is going to need parking."
Parking will soon be enforced until 6:00pm, instead of the current 4:30pm cut-off. And no more free parking on Saturdays.
Beverly Barton lives in Chattanooga. She said, "Saturdays you could come down here and bring your grandchildren to play, no you have to pay to park. I mean, you’ve got all these parking places and they want to charge us for this."
Matthews explained, "If you go downtown on a Saturday, you’re going to find that a lot of the spaces are taken before any body even comes to town. That’s employees taking the spaces, so that’s one of the reasons we felt like Saturday enforcement was probably a good next step."
All of these new changes went into effect on September first, but they’re not being enforced just yet.
Matthews said, "For the extended times, for the 4:30 to 6:00 and for the Saturdays we’re going to issue warnings for the first month just so people can kind of get used to it, because I know it’s something new and they’re not used to paying for the meters at those times."
Matthews said another future step for the downtown will be shared parking.
That is, garages that are only daily parking right now for people working downtown will have to become multi-use for residents at night.
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