City Transportation Director Blythe Bailey, left, speaks to a group about a potential light-rail system while City Councilman Yusuf Hakeem listens during a meeting in 2014.FOR MORE INFORMATION
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The town sometimes called "Choo Choo City" might operate passenger trains again.
Blythe Bailey, the city's transportation administrator, hosted the first of three public input meetings Thursday to get feedback on the possibility of a light-rail passenger system in Chattanooga.
"To get a successful system, it starts with people being involved," he said. "With a project like this, it's going to change the way our city works."
Enthusiasm has been escalating in the community and on social media since this summer when the city announced it landed a $400,000 federal grant to study the potential of transforming neglected railways to carry passengers.
If Bailey has his way, the city will enter a new era of transportation.
"Chattanooga is synonymous with train travel," he said in a telephone conference. "It's more than just about nostalgia. This history means there are miles of freight rail, buried street car lines."
Peter Haliburton of Cambridge Systematics, the consultant company leading the study on the light-rail system, said the passenger rail would boost economic development in neglected communities and improve quality of life. It would attract investors and make it possible to save money on purchasing cars, or at least by not needing to drive them frequently. Implementation would take about 12 years, he said.
Bailey said the rail system would accommodate the city's future growth, and having more transportation to certain areas would generate more activity and make them safer. He said several cities in the Southeast such as Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, N.C., and Norfolk, Va., have revived rail systems within the past 20 years to accommodate growth, and Chattanooga can learn from their challenges and successes.
The project would cost about $35 million, according to news reports.
Southside resident Alex Volz, formerly of New York and California, shared his hope and excitement for a passenger rail system after the Thursday meeting.
"I love riding around on trains," he said. "We successfully built trains hundreds of years ago. I think we can figure it out again in 2015."
But not everyone in the crowd of about 100 was as enthusiastic.
A woman who would not give her name but identified herself at the meeting as an Amazon employee said transportation funds would be better spent on addressing present needs, such as getting people back and forth to work at Amazon and the Enterprise South industrial park.
She noted that there is no public transportation to Amazon for weekend workers, and said no studies are needed to reveal the congested traffic during shift changes.
"What I don't want us to do is get on a dream boat and ignore what is going on today," she said. "Would the money be better spent to provide better service where we have traffic issues right now?"
Two other public input meetings are scheduled for January and April 2016.
Contact staff writer Yolanda Putman at 423-757-6431 or yputman@timesfreepress.com.
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