Chattanooga’s Transit Ecosystem + Sustainable Community Solutions
How can innovative transit options create community solutions through enhanced mobility?
Find out how CARTA and UT Chattanooga’s sociology department are working in tandem with Vanderbilt and other university researchers to better understand what residents need from a local on-demand transit option.
This month’s Lunch & Learn features Philip Pugliese, General Manager of Planning & Grants for CARTA, and Dr. Chandra Ward, Assistant Professor of Sociology for UTC’s Department of Social, Cultural, and Justice Studies.
RSVP below!
(This virtual event is the 3rd in green|spaces’ Integrated Community Sustainability Plan Series.)
Read more about the speakers:
Dr. Chandra Ward, UTC Sociology
Ward is an urban sociology professor working in collaboration with CARTA, Vanderbilt University, and other university researchers to explore alternative transit options that will make up the Chattanooga transit ecosystem. Specifically, her team is piloting a micro-transit, or on-demand transit option here in Chattanooga.
Community engagement is an integral part of this project and its success. The transit will be designed to be responsive to community needs initially arising from qualitative data collection. From there, community surveys will be distributed in order to customize the on-demand transit to the actual, not perceived, needs of potential users. (This type of iterative process will continue to collect data and adapt the transit according to community needs.)
Philip Pugliese, CARTA
Pugliese has been actively engaged in transportation policy and planning since 2002 and has served as technical staff to the Chattanooga‐Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency, liaison to the National Complete Streets Coalition and is currently General Manager of Planning and Grants for the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA).
Philip has directed and implemented multimodal transportation plans including the design and installation of CARTA’s Solar Assisted Electric Vehicle Charging and Car Share project and Bike Chattanooga Bicycle Transit System. He has conducted research on transportation mode choice behavior and development of mobility-as-a-service solutions and is currently leading research awarded from the U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle Technologies Office. With 20-years prior experience in the air freight and logistics industry, Philip brings a broad perspective to transportation issues.