Chattanooga’s push to provide multimodal transportation opportunities has implications far beyond the downtown area, officials said during City Councilwoman Carol Berz’s quarterly public meeting last week.
“You can see a definite line of congestion from downtown to MidTown [in Brainerd] to Hamilton Place,” said city engineer Bert Kuyrkendall. “It’s a challenge and a good thing, because it means there is economic activity in those areas – people going to shop, people wanting to buy things, people visiting businesses – but it’s also something we have to factor in.”
In the area spanning from MidTown all the way to Bonny Oaks Drive, multimodal transportation is already widely used, he said. CARTA’s bus Route 4, which travels from Fourth and Market streets downtown to Hamilton Place, has some of the highest bus ridership across the city, said Kuyrkendall, adding that an estimated 34 percent of that route’s ridership goes from MidTown to the East Hamilton areas the route serves.
For a long time, Kuyrkendall said, Chattanooga has developed “around a nucleus pattern,” meaning that there is one center – downtown – and everything extends outwardly from it.
“And that’s great for a car-centric model. It’s like a bulls-eye,” he said.
Kuyrkendall said to make cities more walkable and bikeable for those interested in doing so, smaller city centers, like the one MidTown has been attempting to grow for itself, are necessary.
“Walkable neighborhoods are definitely in demand,” he added. “People want to live somewhere where they can walk to daily activities, where kids can walk to school, where you can walk to transit stops. All these things factor together.”
National website walkscore.com rates the Brainerd and East Brainerd area as the sixth-most walkable part of Chattanooga. However, it clarifies, this does not mean the area is walkable, since Chattanooga’s overall rating is 29 out of 100.
“Most errands require a car in Brainerd, Chattanooga,” the website states, adding that North Shore and downtown are considered “favorable” for walkability.