CARTA is looking to bring an ordinance before the Chattanooga City Council as quickly as possible to let the transit authority boot vehicles with unpaid parking tickets to solve a downtown situation in which “everyone suffers.”
According to the Chattanooga Regional Transportation Authority, as of Jan. 31, there were about 74,500 outstanding fines for parking violations in the city, for a total of almost $4.7 million that has yet to be paid.
A state law enacted in 2024 and upheld by a judge in 2025, known as the Motion Act, generally prohibited booting as a method of parking enforcement when a vehicle in a designated parking spot stays past its allotted time. Motion is an acronym for modernization of towing, immobilization, and oversight normalization.
Only vehicles that are abandoned, immobile or unattended may be booted or towed, and that can only be done 12 hours after they were first noted as abandoned, immobile or unattended by authorities.