12 Aug, 2015

City of Adelaide Votes To Investigate Hospital Parking

City of Adelaide last night voted to investigate a number of measures relating to parking in the vicinity of the Women’s & Children’s Hospital for nurses, patients and visitors.

Numerous meetings have been held with management staff from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital as well as the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Association prior to and since the opening of Adelaide Oval to discuss current difficulties for nursing staff, added pressures during Adelaide Oval events and how best these can be managed.

Council decided to instruct the Chief Executive Officer to investigate the following:

• Dashboard tickets to exempt nurses from event day restrictions
• Dashboard tickets for evening and night shift nurses to exempt from normal restrictions;
• Dashboard tickets for parents of very sick children who need to stay for longer than event and normal restrictions
• Parents who overstay because of emergency situation have their fine waived;
• Ask State Government to compensate hospital to allow more allocated nursing and patient parking for free, or reduced cost in existing car park
• The hospital be given the tickets to be allocated as they see fit
• Increase the number of disability accessible parking spaces near the Women’s and Children’s Hospital; and
• The use of current 4 hour and 10 hour spaces on MacKinnon Parade as a permit zone for parking for afternoon/late shift nursing staff with such permits issued by The Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

While the car park at the hospital is managed by the hospital, this investigation will examine opportunities to ease the pressure on parking in the surrounding area.

Two hour event parking restrictions apply to a 1.25 kilometre radius around Adelaide Oval during events, excluding main streets such as O’Connell Street, and sections of Tynte Street, Wellington Square, Ward Street and Archer Street.

The parking restrictions were introduced to manage on-street parking around the Oval and in North Adelaide during events to ensure parking was maintained for residents, business and retail customers, hospital attendees, sport and recreation users, and Park Lands users. The restrictions are designed to encourage turnover of the spaces thereby allowing more motorists the opportunity of parking in them and to stop North Adelaide from becoming parked out during events and to support those who need to use the area.

Paula Stevens