Hospital workers who currently park in the paid lot at the St. Joseph's site between 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. are being asked to park in the free lots at the corner of Paris and York Streets, effective June 1.
That's one of the changes Sudbury Regional Hospital is making "to alleviate congestion and allow proper access to emergency and priority parking areas," vice chair of the performance monitoring committee Scott Lund told fellow board members at their May 13 meeting.
"The staff are not going to be excited about this," CEO Vickie Kaminski said. "Anytime you want to get any kind of emotional response, talk about parking."
The other changes, which were endorsed by the hospital parking committee, are: increasing the daily rate from $3 to $4, more security patrols in the parking lots, control of ticketing by the hospital rather than the city (to start sometime after June 1), increasing parking spaces for physicians and senior administration, providing designated access to people who work the late day and evening shifts, redefining designated parking areas near the entrance, providing short-term access for patients and visitors, setting up a vehicle identification system for priority parking and promotion of car pooling and public transit.
The money the hospital will collect from parking fines will be used the same way the money from parking fees is used - to maintain the lots, hospital spokesman Sean Barrette said.
He added the parking changes will be posted on the hospital website on May 16.
"We need to look at a longer term solution to parking issues," Kaminski said. "There's a lot of concern about the one-site parking. On paper we have the right number of spots for the number of people who are going to be here, but until we actually get here and try out the parking spots, people are a bit dubious."
Industry consultants determined the number of parking spots that will be needed when the three sites become one in 2009, Barrette said. However since then, programs such as the cancer program have expanded.
