A parking ticket is placed on a vehicle off East 10th Street in Chattanooga.The groaning began in October when white warning tickets began sprouting beneath windshield wipers on the streets of Chattanooga. Many of the tickets were going not to shoppers, lunchers or tourists, but to downtown business employees.
On the first day the new Chattanooga Parking Authority put its green-shirted “ambassadors” out to pound the pavement, a manager of Sticky Fingers on Broad noted: “Some of my employees got some [tickets].”
Anyone who has gone downtown to lunch or to run into an office or shop knows the real trick is to find a parking place at a meter. So anything to free up a spot that will only cost a quarter for 20 minutes or 75 cents for a hour was welcome.
But Chattanooga got a bonus, too: In addition to 140 freed-up metered parking spaces, the change so far is netting about a half million new dollars a year in revenue earmarked for parking improvements.
Think new meters that take credit cards, solar powered meters that don’t eat up city power bills, meters and parking spaces that you can pay and extend from your smart cellphone, as well as potential new parking garages.