Comment 117195

By highasageorgiapine (registered) | Posted March 23, 2016 at 13:10:49

i thought we had run this argument into the ground in the blog post about that parking lot last week lol. i agree with you that more people should use public transit to get to work at this location, but at this point i highly doubt that increasing the parking price will change behaviours for a number of reasons i had already mentioned:

  1. bus services to this location are poor. the 2 is often late and overcrowded. taking a bus to main and walking would be okay to me, but people who don't use transit now are not going to be convinced to do so if it involves an extra km of walking from the bus stop to get to the destination. could you use a sobi to make that shorter? sure. but that adds a step that shouldn't be necessary and is a huge disincentive given how awful our bike infrastructure is. we have articles on here that argue if people don't feel safe or comfortable they wont use cycling as an option. the public transit options are not acceptable if we want behaviour change.

  2. the timing of shifts make using the hsr even more difficult. the shift times and weekend work mean longer times between buses. if you stay a few minutes late (which happens very often) you may miss a bus and end up waiting a significant amount of time for the next one. if you have a single connecting bus you may end up waiting a significant amount of time again.

  3. the bike infrastructure is not good. it could certainly be worse, but like much of hamilton there is not a ton of safe biking routes that would help get people out of their cars and on a bike to this location. nestled between 2 high speed one way streets running north and south that accommodate significant heavy traffic from the port lands, and a fast stretch of barton that has no traffic calming measures, this site is not very accomodating for direct cycling. it isn't awful if you can take cannon then ferguson and just walk it the block to work. getting there will likely involve taking a road that isn't perceived as safe for cycling preventing people from even trying. it wouldnt be hard to make a separated lane on wellington or victoria but this would upset the councilor of some ward who may have driven down that road once and would be upset if it was .5 seconds slower. there are alleyways but there isn't a chance people would feel safe riding down them in the middle of the night. really, walking to parking there is often perceived as unsafe and thus staff working late often get security/other staff to walk with them. there is some validity to that argument though i never had many issues there.

these are easily fixable problems. i disagree that these problems should be addressed by HHS. despite being a healthcare org their job is not advocacy for what would be public health issues. we have city staff who do that, and politicians who don't listen.

Additionally, HHS makes money from parking. this is the latest way our hospitals are shoring up their finances, which is awful and stupid, but the reality of running these businesses. getting rid of parking and supplementing it with bus passes would cost them money and at this point would be very unpopular. i don't like the argument that HHS has more of a commitment to do this for the community than anyone else. if they are expected to do so, all businesses should be held to a similar standard. (business taxes and developer charges for transit improvement would be nice, no?)

i don't think the comparison to mcmaster is quite fair because students rely on public transit so advocating for service is in their best interest financially. a ton of people get to mcmaster driving and not parking on campus also, there are numerous areas for street parking and these are generally packed most days with people. i remember most of the lots actually on the campus and not in cootes having waiting lists when i worked there, so hhs isnt an exception in this regard. mcmaster does do a good job of trying to reduce cars on or around campus though. it's important for maintaining safety for the hordes of walking students and the atmosphere of the campus, which isn't quite equivalent to the situation at the gen.

as someone who worked at this location, and also next door, i would have loved better transit options to work. i am a person who generally uses active transit and did so when i worked here. it was not enjoyable or convenient at all. i am sure many people would love to have better access not only to the general, but along the barton corridor itself. i think a divided bike lane down wellington/victoria and an express bus down barton in addition to the current service would be a simple but massive improvement

edit: i feel the constant need to defend myself by saying i definitely do not support additional parking lots here. i can simultaneously hold the viewpoint that taking public transit here is awful and hhs has no incentive to get their staff to do so while also advocating for giving them a reason to change their point of view.

Comment edited by highasageorgiapine on 2016-03-23 13:15:22

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