Hospital parking woes continue

Yeah paid parking is the only way, but as pointed out it needs to be pay at the end, not pay and display as they did. As someone suggested few hours free, then charge ranging up to the max for the area. If you are a patient, then do as some shopping centres do (and I think the tradies club at Dickson), get validation inside for free parking. Easy, but yes it requires gates and staff, which costs money.

Pay parking didn’t make it any easier to park at the hospital. When I visited, I still drove around and around to no avail, nearly missing my appointment.

Since then I’ve been parking in the nearby streets and walking. Doesn’t do much good for my lung function tests when I get inside. There was a lady last time I was there on 24hr oxygen who has to book the earliest appointments just so she can get a park close enough for her to walk.

FFS people!
They are building a multi sory car park on the hospital grounds at Woden and a several hundred car parking space across the road for staff.
I doubt very much if any worker is parking at the hospital and then walks to Woden to work just to save a cuppacino in parking fees. And unless proved otherwise, I doubt anyone is using the hospital as a park and ride.

Canberra needs some sensible park’n’rides. I bet a lot of the people parking at the hospitals are doing this.

I work in a Woden Office and my partner works at the hospital. I have been watching this train wreak evolve over the last few years. We car pooled for a while and i did walk to woden BUT i never saw that many people walking towards Woden. In fact, over the last year, i would say that I was the only one walking that direction.

The consolidation of services at and around the hospital combined with the ANU grads has filled the carpark. It was getting worse every year and then all the new grads coming seem to tip it over the edge.

I wonder why they can’t build a nice three story underground park, paid, of course and then put a nice two or three story office above, sort of like what they have in the new Canberra Centre. You could get the private setor to flip the bill and give them a 50 year lease for the car park.

AD: having visual of Hospital staff parking lot on top of Red Hill and flying fox down to work… 🙂

As a parent of a kiddie that’s frequently in Canberra Hospital I think the solution is simple.

. Make the parking 2 hour limited. This stops workers from elsewhere from parking there, but allows most visitors to patients to park for free. Who’d want to visit for more than 2 hours? Have the grey ghosts police this viciously!

. Patients (either admitted, outpatients or A@E) get one voucher that hospital staff put a time/date on. You place this on the dash to keep the grey ghosts away.

Paediatrics used to have this system – if my kid was going to be in for an estimated three days – the voucher said so. Voucher could be shared between primary care-givers over those 3 days. Extensions available if required.

It’s a trivial amount of work for the front desk/nursing staff and it keeps those legitimately visiting the place happy.

What’s the rate when you go in for what you think is a straightforward problem and wait in ED for 8 hours?

What do you pay when your vehicle has been parked there for the last 6 days while you are caring for a loved one ?

Just about all the above suggestion have little merit or are unworkable in the real world.

User pays is the only workable solution that is difficult to abuse. It can be implemented in a smarter way than the ill-conceived previous disaster.

Example: Free for the first two hours. After that a sliding scale to a maximum of the Woden all-day rate. Payment on exit. That’s it. Quick visits become free, all-day visits are still affordable, and the price mechanism can be adjusted to suit the load, so that if it turns out that 40% of the daily spaces are always empty, the daily rate could be reduced to make it a bit more attractive and get the spaces utilised.

Not rocket science but it seems to be beyond the grasp of the responsible officials in the ACT Govt…