North Shore parking debate

|On March 12, free parking at the Chattanooga Theatre Center lot near Coolidge Park and much of the parking areas on the riverfront came to an end. CARTA will be charging motorists $1 to park for two hours and $2 for four hours. First off, having to pay money makes high school & college students irate to begin with. Having to pay for anything that seems like it should be free is a drag. A public park you have to pay for doesn’t make sense. It’s true, the city doesn’t have admission booths situated around these places (Coolidge, Renaissance, Ross’s Landing, etc.) but the general visitor will have to pay some city fee somewhere to get to their destination. The evergreen parks and recreation areas of downtown Chattanooga are hardly gifts. Tourists and residents alike have to pay to enter an exhibit at the Hunter, take their kids to the Discovery Museum and before getting to these places they have to pay to park. An extremist will ask how much longer before the Walnut St. Bridge becomes the world’s first pedestrian toll bridge.