Raise the Hammer

This whole situation is no big surprise when you consider the realities of parking and hospitals. Administration sees it as a revenue source. The staff view it as perk. Very few medical staff for example want to bike or take transit home after working 12 hour shifts that, regularly stretch to 14. Most of the medical staff also usually have shift changes when transit is either not operating at peak service, or at all. The wages most hospital workers get, though not all hospital workers, make them for the most part non transit dependent. My wife is a nurse who used to work at a hospital, very few of the staff want to be around non medical people, when they are travelling home after a long shift. Let alone bike halfway across the city. As my wife would say about transit, "whinny, smelly people and their families are not what I want to be going home with, after treating the same people for 12-14 hours at work!" This may sound harsh but it is mainly due to the fact that, when you poured all your compassion, caring and sympathy out to patients and their families for the last 12-14 hours, there is usually very little left for anyone else when the shift is over. For a few hours anyway.

Its was also no surprise to me that here in Ottawa a few years ago, the Ottawa General Hospital Campus had less than 50 employees show up to an in house information night and display (over 2 separate days), when O.C. Transpo wanted Hospital worker feed back about putting in a potential Transitway and station in the empty land that surrounds the north and eastern boundary of their Campus. This would have made the Ottawa General Campus an easy to get to location for everyone working and visiting there. Literally, almost 24 hours a day rapid transit access. Compared to the nightmare traffic conditions it normally has, especially during peak hours, using the local roads.

This is no minor healthcare operation. The Campus includes the location of not only the Ottawa General Hospital. It also includes Eastern Ottawa's largest Cancer Treatment Centre, The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa Children's Treatment Centre, The Ottawa Rehabilitation Centre, The National Defense Medical Centre and Rideau Pearly Veterans Home, one of the largest seniors homes in the Ottawa area. Not to mention, the area's Ronald McDonald House, Rogers House and the Civitan House for Families. It also has the main location of the University of Ottawa's Medical School and Degree Nursing Program. Both, the only Bilingual schools of their type in Ontario. So it definitely has a high number of potentially interested employees. Yet, very few showed up to even take a look. When asked, the Hospital administration was surprised that O.C. Transpo would even ask employees because they believed almost everyone drove to work or lives so close to the campus that, they just walk here. The concept that staff or anyone for that matter, would actually bike to the Campus, especially during Ottawa's winter, was a complete surprise suggestion to the administration.