HOSPITAL PARKING
Using Travel Plans to cut costs and parking problems
Hospitals regularly suffer with high numbers of cars arriving at site, with their drivers wanting to use onsite parking, resulting in a higher demand for car parking spaces than is actually available. Here Simon Bourke, Healthcare Sector lead for global professional services firm, RPS Group, looks at the key considerations, and at some of the key steps in developing an effective Travel Plan, with a focus on the positive outcomes resulting from doing this at two large acute NHS Trusts.
The Sustainable Development Unit estimates that the NHS’s 1.3 million staff, patients, and visitors each day account for approximately 5% of road traffic in England. The SDU recognises that the sheer volume of this traffic not only slows people down, but also affects the environment, road safety, and access times for the critically ill, encourages more sedentary lifestyles, and makes up about a fifth of the NHS carbon footprint. Equally, the public may find it difficult, or be unable to, park in a convenient place close enough to where they need to access care, or to visit friends or family being cared for in a hospital or other healthcare facility.
Traffic congestion, and high volumes of traffic, also affect staff if they can’t easily access their place of work, or face high parking charges. An extreme example of this was at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where car parking was managed by an independent operator. Although staff were allocated designated spaces, finding a free space was often problematic. resulting in them using paid parking spots but not buying a ticket. The car park operator took the staff to court, and won the case, with £150,000 being awarded in fines.
Significant administration costs Many hospitals require their staff to visit patients in their homes, and in most cases using a car is the only practical way of doing this. This can result in significant administration costs for staff using their own cars when travelling on hospital business. The processing of expenses claims can be time-consuming both for staff, and hospital administrators; there are also the associated direct costs in mileage reimbursement to staff, plus the more ‘hidden’ costs of indirect costs in the administration processing time.
Developing Travel Plans A Travel Plan is a package of measures aimed at promoting sustainable travel within an organisation, with an emphasis
Figure 1: London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zones came into effect in April 2019 for the centre of London, and are due to be extended to the North and South Circular roads in October 2021. (Map used courtesy of Transport for London).
on reducing reliance on single occupancy vehicle travel. The development of a well- thought-through Travel Plan, coupled with innovative car usage, have multiple benefits – in combination they can significantly reduce the impact of hospital traffic on the surrounding community, reduce pressure on car parking, improve site safety. and increase business efficiency.
The first step for any Trust with a wider estate is to develop a Trust-wide Strategic Travel Plan Framework that sets out the encompassing principles of a Trust-wide transport strategy. This provides the framework from which individual site-specific Travel Plans can be prepared to reflect the unique transport requirements of each Trust site. For the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, a primary objective was to reduce the number of vehicles parking at its sites. To enable this, a Strategic Travel Plan Framework was developed which defined the methodology, objectives, principles,
and commitment that would be applied by the Trust when developing site- specific Travel Plans for the sites. In accordance with best practice, the site-specific Travel Plans focused on staff travel, although patients, visitors, and service-providers, were encouraged to take advantage of initiatives that could be used by them.
Accessibility reviews Each site-specific Travel Plan was prepared based on site-specific accessibility reviews (access by foot, bicycle, and passenger transport), an analysis of home postcode locations – in relation to travel times to and from the sites by existing and potential modes of travel – and travel surveys of staff. From this it was determined how many staff would qualify for a parking permit based on certain accessibility criteria; in this case it was assessed that staff whose journey to work exceeded a 25-minute cycle or
October 2019 Health Estate Journal 75
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