Tom Dugan of Chattanooga’s mass transit authority thinks so:
CARTA Executive director Tom Dugan told authority members Thursday that up to one-fifth of the people working at the new Volkswagen plant may opt to ride buses to work, rather than driving their own vehicles.
That’s because the parking lot for the new plant is huge, he said, and “the last ones to arrive may have a half-hour walk just to get to the plant . . . Its a half mile from the end of the parking lot to the plant entrance . . . We would transport right to the door.”
This, of course, is absurd.
I think it’s great that CARTA will provide good bus service to the new Volkswagen plant, especially considering it isn’t in a downtown area. But it doesn’t take most people 30 minutes to walk half a mile (about 800 metres, for those of you in the rest of the world who are doubtless ROFL at this point). If it does, they’re probably handicapped, in which case they’ll get the specially marked places nearer the building.
But it may just scare some people here. Chattanooga doesn’t have an employer with a grade parking lot this large; the downtown employers use parking buildings and on the whole aren’t this big. But that’s the price of progress. And it’ll be a great corporate exercise programme for those who need it (and they’re numerous in this part of the US).
Positive Infinity 