Chattanooga City Council members for the first time Tuesday saw CARTA’s proposed legislation for enhanced parking enforcement downtown, as well as a plan to get private lot operators to lower prices.
“We have an environment in private parking in Chattanooga that has become predatory,” council Chair Jenny Hill of North Chattanooga said after the presentation, while also noting that private businesses downtown rely on a steady flow of customers coming in. “It’s important to be able to park, and if people didn’t park and stay all day, then we wouldn’t need paid parking.”
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Since the passage of the Motion Act in 2024, a state law heavily restricting the usage of towing and booting as means of traffic enforcement, the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority has struggled to deal with chronic parking violators. As a result, delinquent citations have ballooned to more than 64,000, worth $4.1 million in fines.
While the transit authority manages and maintains all on-street parking downtown, most publicly accessible lots and garages in the area are privately owned. Those private operators are in the same boat as CARTA, finding themselves unable to deal with parking scofflaws beyond ticketing. A ballooning number of delinquent citations from repeat offenders leave little recourse for the operator.