Change is never easy.
Sometimes there is a really good reason: Because we are not prepared.
That would seem to be the case with the current consternation about Chattanooga's new zoning proposals that pretty much ignore any need for developers to consider the impact of their development on downtown and North Shore parking.
To sum up the new zoning, developers in much of the "central city district" don't have to worry anymore with including a parking plan for their new condos, apartments or commercial structures.
What's going unsaid is that our city is building a field of dreams. City planners and developers are embracing the dream of city-dwelling, innovation-minded millennials who don't want to own a car. So they are building condos by the score with no parking, and turning already-narrow roads into single-lane streets with bicycle lanes.
Build it and they will come, goes the high-minded mantra.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can't get to work for the bicyclers and can't park our cars because there's no parking.
Yet there's also no bus or "light rail" or subway or angel wings to get us into and around the city. More people don't already live downtown because until a few years ago there wasn't anyplace to live inside our river-fringed and Interstate-bound downtown. The sidewalks rolled up at 5 p.m. Now that we are building residences downtown, we only want folks who plan on spending their lives within a few square blocks?
So to borrow from an overused transportation metaphor, trying to turn our downtown into a pedestrian and bicycle Xanadu without some reasonable concessions seems to have the cart before the horse.
Chattanooga planners and developers may have "the vision," but all they are sharing with current downtown dwellers and city workaday folks are the inconveniences of that vision. Most of us don't recall yesterday's news, much less a story on the front page in May of 2014 that talked about Chattanooga officials hoping to use existing rail tracks around the city to connect downtown and neighborhoods to the airport and Enterprise South with a "light rail" system.
The light rail would include "hubs" where travelers could get off the train and hop on an electric shuttle, a bike, or a bus. The proposed light rail route was then described as including Enterprise South, the airport, the Glass Street area, Warner Park, Southside and Downtown, the old U.S. Pipe site, Alton Park and East Lake. City officials said they planned to pursue a federal grant to fund a study for the rail service. That study has been underway for some time now, but building a light rail - if we do - is still years away.
And CARTA still is cutting suburban service and even in-city service - not expanding it.
So it should come as no surprise to anyone that traffic congesting bicycle lanes are making people angry. Nor should it be a shocker that parking has become the most-debated issue in the 200-plus page form-based code - the most significant changes to downtown zoning regulations in a half century.
The City Council will vote on the proposed code June 14.
From the long view, having fewer cars in any downtown is clearly a benefit: Less congestion, less pollution, less noise, less concrete, less cost, less carbon (if the buses and light rail are electric or hybrid). Some years ago, a group of journalists from Germany visited Chattanooga to study why we had - stress "had" - a reputation as an environmentally minded city. Looking at an aerial map of downtown, they were struck by what they called "wasted" space taken up by parking lot asphalt. Why was so much of our city inhabited only by cars and only for about eight or 10 hours a day?
They were right, of course.
But Chattanooga is not Munich, or even New York, Boston or downtown Atlanta. We do not have the infrastructure, and thus we have not retrained the folks who people our downtown.
Think about it, city leaders: Our town's favorite meme and invitation is "Live, Work, Play in Chattanooga."
We may need to add some small print: "One lane at a time, and don't forget to leave your car a mile out."