hospital parking fees

AndrewJRenko · 16-10-2018 4:43pm

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

Jesus Christ - seriously ???? You're haranguing the parent of a child with CANCER to make your billionth anti car post ????

I doubt it will do any good, certainly not to your attitude but my conscience tells me your post needs to be reported for that.

Haranguing? Really?

Are we allowed discuss facts here at all?

It's kinda funny that you accuse me of being anti car given your own personal agenda against anything to do with cycling.

16-10-2018 5:34pm

TheChizler wrote: »

It certainly would be if you built the hospital outside the city making public transport even less of an option.

Most people don’t use public transport for getting to hospital for a start and the many millions saved in land cost and planning issues could buy a fleet of shuttle busses to bring anyone from the city out to the hospital if that’s what they wish. Build the hospital far enough outside the city and traffic won’t be any issue. It also makes it far far easier to get to hospital for all the people who are not from Dublin and are traveling up to the hospital from all around the country.

It was an absolutely idiotic move to build a new hospital in the middle of a city.

What Username Guidelines · 16-10-2018 5:55pm

Ford White Sisterhood wrote: »

It was an absolutely idiotic move to build a new hospital in the middle of a city.

From a parking perspective, maybe. But for centralising expertise, and therefore providing a greater standard of care, it was an excellent move.

Buford T. Justice XIX · 16-10-2018 8:05pm

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

If you had spent one tenth of the time reading my post that you actually spent thinking up problems, you might have noticed that I didn't actually refer to public transport.

But it is interesting to note the fanatical grip used to cling on to arrangements for storage of private property in public spaces. It's not just "won't someone please think of the children". It is now "won't someone please think of the sick, cancerous children".

A bit extreme, no?

Mod note: Ah here, don't post in this thread again.

Buford T. Justice.

BohsCeltic · 17-10-2018 7:10am

Ford White Sisterhood wrote: »

No way should medical card holders get free parking and not those who don’t, not only are non-medical card holders funding the medical card holders with their taxes but now you want them to pay for their parking while medical card holders don’t. It should be the other way around if anything, the people funding the healthcare system with their taxes should be the ones getting .

That's not entirely true. I am on illness benefit at the moment which is a taxable source of income.

Graces7 · 17-10-2018 7:51am

BohsCeltic wrote: »

That's not entirely true. I am on illness benefit at the moment which is a taxable source of income.

No way should medical card holders get free parking and not those who don’t, not only are non-medical card holders funding the medical card holders with their taxes but now you want them to pay for their parking while medical card holders don’t. It should be the other way around if anything, the people funding the healthcare system with their taxes should be the ones getting . said nox

The state funds health care, not you, and we all actually pay taxes anyways . OK?OK.

Adding parking costs means poorer folk cannot access hospital care. Been in that situation more than once.

iamwhoiam · 17-10-2018 7:55am

Graces7 wrote: »

No way should medical card holders get free parking and not those who don’t, not only are non-medical card holders funding the medical card holders with their taxes but now you want them to pay for their parking while medical card holders don’t. It should be the other way around if anything, the people funding the healthcare system with their taxes should be the ones getting . said nox

The state funds health care, not you, and we all actually pay taxes anyways . OK?OK.

Adding parking costs means poorer folk cannot access hospital care. Been in that situation more than once.

A question Grace . Do you think a person who holds a medical card should be allowed free parking to visit a neighbour in a hospital one random day , while the parents of a long term oncology admission pay hundreds of Euro to park for weeks or months .? It would be a hugely unfair way of dealing with it

GreeBo · 17-10-2018 8:17am

If hospital is cheaper than on street parking the car park will be full.
Its more expensive to try to restrict it to people who need to park there since it's a scarce resource. There is nothing complicated about this.

The vast majority of users could indeed use other transport rather than their car, it might be more inconvenient but then that's why you are paying more, for convenience.

I think a rebate system would be the most sensible should you need long term usage of said car park, but also people need to look at alternatives like taxis.

beauf · 17-10-2018 8:21am

What Username Guidelines wrote: »

From a parking perspective, maybe. But for centralising expertise, and therefore providing a greater standard of care, it was an excellent move.

I never understood this argument.

All the people I know who attend hospitals regularly. They get referred to completely different locations and hospitals all the time. Driving across Dublin takes the same time as it would to get well into the Midlands.

These services are scattered to the for corners of Dublin in every nook and cranny because there is no space and no parking. Even if you do have two different appointments in the same hospital they are on different days and often one specialist won't have spoken to the other.

Maybe in other countries it's all done in the same hospital. Not the reality here.

Rechuchote · 17-10-2018 8:24am

Ford White Sisterhood wrote: »

It was an absolutely idiotic move to build a new hospital in the middle of a city.

Yes and no.

Cities need hospitals - if you're run down by a "sorry mate, didn't see you" driver, if you have a devastating heart attack, if your kid swallows a peanut and it goes down the wrong way, you want to be rushed to a hospital near you.

The problem isn't being in the city, it's that cities don't work because of traffic. Half of all journeys under 2 kilometres in Ireland are driven; two-thirds (69%) of all car journeys are solo - only the driver in the car. So the streets are clogged with cars that shouldn't be there.

Some cities are dealing with this by having a standard bus/tram/metro fare; others have gone further and made all public transport free. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/15/i-leave-the-car-at-home-how-free-buses-are-revolutionising-one-french-city (In one city, the number using public transport increased 60% the day this was introduced.)

What Username Guidelines · 17-10-2018 8:49am

beauf wrote: »

I never understood this argument.

All the people I know who attend hospitals regularly. They get referred to completely different locations and hospitals all the time. Driving across Dublin takes the same time as it would to get well into the Midlands.

These services are scattered to the for corners of Dublin in every nook and cranny because there is no space and no parking. Even if you do have two different appointments in the same hospital they are on different days and often one specialist won't have spoken to the other.

Maybe in other countries it's all done in the same hospital. Not the reality here.

True, but that’s what they’re doing at James’ hospital by combining services of temple street, Tallaght and crumlin hospital into one, and co-locating it with St James Hospital. There are countless taxis and couriers running between these hospitals and IBTS at James’s already every day, and most consultants will work at more than one hospital. Combining them will mean less travel time, better access to blood products, access to better experience and equipment, etc.

beauf · 17-10-2018 10:23am

What Username Guidelines wrote: »

True, but that’s what they’re doing at James’ hospital by combining services of temple street, Tallaght and crumlin hospital into one, and co-locating it with St James Hospital. There are countless taxis and couriers running between these hospitals and IBTS at James’s already every day, and most consultants will work at more than one hospital. Combining them will mean less travel time, better access to blood products, access to better experience and equipment, etc.

In 10yrs of attending temple street we've never had anything referred to adult hospital. With the exception of Cappagh or Central Remedial Clinic.. AFAIK they aren't combining those. Maybe our experience is not typical.

With adults we've been referred all over the city. Its only been condensed into one location when we've kicked up fuss about it.

cython · 18-10-2018 9:59pm

Graces7 wrote: »

No way should medical card holders get free parking and not those who don’t, not only are non-medical card holders funding the medical card holders with their taxes but now you want them to pay for their parking while medical card holders don’t. It should be the other way around if anything, the people funding the healthcare system with their taxes should be the ones getting . said nox

The state funds health care, not you, and we all actually pay taxes anyways . OK?OK.

Adding parking costs means poorer folk cannot access hospital care. Been in that situation more than once.

Some pay more taxes than others though. In fact one of the key distinctions in taxation is direct vs indirect (think PAYE vs VAT). When you say "we all actually pay taxes", you refer to indirect taxes - there are genuinely a cohort of people who don't pay any direct taxes so while indirect taxes like VAT are hard to avoid, it is still the case that some people pay no direct taxation. This is what people usually mean when they refer to people not paying tax.

As for "The state funds health care, not you" - who the hell do you think funds the state?? It's not the leprechauns and their pots of gold, for what it's worth! It's the taxpayers (or if there is a budget deficit, lenders, who are eventually repaid by guess who? The taxpayers!), thus taxpayers fund healthcare once you stop beating around the bush.

BohsCeltic wrote: »

That's not entirely true. I am on illness benefit at the moment which is a taxable source of income.

Without any offence intended towards yourself or others in your situation, taxation on illness benefit (similar to on public sector wages), is partly a political exercise (so the raw figure is larger) and a mechanism to recoup public expenditure. Without the taxation levied on private enterprise, the state coffers would eventually exhaust themselves as the diminishing percentages of percentages return to the exchequer.

Moomintroll99 · 19-10-2018 11:29am

But it is interesting to note the fanatical grip used to cling on to arrangements for storage of private property in public spaces. It's not just "won't someone please think of the children". It is now "won't someone please think of the sick, cancerous children".

A bit extreme, no?

I really don't get this line of argument. You are upset that parents of sick kids might argue to be allowed to park in the carpark of the kids hospital? If the carpark of the only kids hospital in the country that treats sick, cancerous children isn't a legitimate place to store the cars of those children, who is it for would you say?

The land is not generally 'public space' either. Temple St for example is owned by the Sisters of Mercy, so they might get rid of the cars but you'll just find the order will sell it to a developer to pay compensation bills etc.

elperello · 19-10-2018 11:39am

Moomintroll99 wrote: »

I really don't get this line of argument. You are upset that parents of sick kids might argue to be allowed to park in the carpark of the kids hospital? If the carpark of the only kids hospital in the country that treats sick, cancerous children isn't a legitimate place to store the cars of those children, who is it for would you say?

The land is not generally 'public space' either. Temple St for example is owned by the Sisters of Mercy, so they might get rid of the cars but you'll just find the order will sell it to a developer to pay compensation bills etc.

That poster was told not to post here again so can't answer you.
I agree with you.
The anti-car lobby should suspend hostilities when it comes to using cars to make a sick persons life a bit easier.
There is a place for a debate about over reliance on cars but it's not here.

Rechuchote · 25-10-2018 8:45am

elperello wrote: »

That poster was told not to post here again so can't answer you.
I agree with you.
The anti-car lobby should suspend hostilities when it comes to using cars to make a sick persons life a bit easier.
There is a place for a debate about over reliance on cars but it's not here.

I think you're misunderstanding what I was talking about here when I raised the question of car-clogged cities being the main problem in relation to hospitals being sited in the city centre.

My point is that because there are thousands of cars containing only a single person each (the latest CSO figures, 2016, found that 69% of all car journeys are, sadly, by people alone in their cars) it's impossible for people who really need to use a car to get through to the hospital.

Even ambulances and fire tenders and squad cars sounding their sirens are often blocked by this needless traffic. We really need to stop using cars for every journey - again, the same Central Statistics Office census figures for 2016 found that half of all journeys under 2km (a 10-minute dander on a bike) were made by car in Ireland. Not in Dublin, in all of Ireland.

If we designed our cities with broad, easily-used protected bike lanes in connected networks, and opened these also to emergency vehicles (but only when actually responding to an emergency), it would make a big difference.

Corruptedmorals · 25-10-2018 10:09pm

If our hospitals weren't so old and unfit for purpose it wouldn't be such a massive problem. Temple Street and the Eye and Ear hospital were both built in the late 19th century and predate commercial cars. Neither are in a position to knock down surrounding buildings to put in a multi storey. Many other major hospitals don't have sufficient space either...what was fine in the 1960's is far from it now.

The numbers going through our hospitals now, none of them were built for it. The A&E and outpatient figures are staggeringly high. Plenty of hospitals would have sacrificed land/space over the years to expand or build new units also and all of them have a lot more staff to deal with the patient numbers than they would have done. The waiting time for a staff car parking space in Crumlin hospital is 10 years.

elperello · 25-10-2018 10:31pm

Rechuchote wrote: »

I think you're misunderstanding what I was talking about here when I raised the question of car-clogged cities being the main problem in relation to hospitals being sited in the city centre.

My point is that because there are thousands of cars containing only a single person each (the latest CSO figures, 2016, found that 69% of all car journeys are, sadly, by people alone in their cars) it's impossible for people who really need to use a car to get through to the hospital.

Even ambulances and fire tenders and squad cars sounding their sirens are often blocked by this needless traffic. We really need to stop using cars for every journey - again, the same Central Statistics Office census figures for 2016 found that half of all journeys under 2km (a 10-minute dander on a bike) were made by car in Ireland. Not in Dublin, in all of Ireland.

If we designed our cities with broad, easily-used protected bike lanes in connected networks, and opened these also to emergency vehicles (but only when actually responding to an emergency), it would make a big difference.

Sorry if I offended but I wasn't really aiming at your post.

You make some balanced points and of course we need to do better in the way we organise cities.

Having said that my point stands.

G-Man · 29-10-2018 10:20pm

Why we need less cars at hospitals....

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/28/top-uk-health-bodies-demand-new-clean-air-act

beauf · 30-10-2018 12:52am

So your point is ban cars for every one but especially the sick.

andekwarhola · 30-10-2018 1:54am

elperello wrote: »

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/tax-on-sick-1m-a-month-collected-in-parking-charges-at-public-hospitals-36694545.html

The parking fees raise €13 million per year.

The HSE total budget for 2018 is €14.5 billion. (I know that is not just for hospitals).

For a a tiny fraction of their spending they are putting sick people and their visitors through all that stress and expense that many can't afford.

The elephant in the room is how much of that generous budget is being pissed away on Byzantine levels of highly unionised layers of superfluous overpaid jobs in said service that only has to provide a functioning health service to a comfortably 'first world' country of 4.7 million people where over 40% of the population have private health insurance.

As for everybody that requires hospital or maternity care in a Dublin hospital being within walking or easy public transport distance of a hospital, come the fcuk again?

Rechuchote · 30-10-2018 6:26am

andekwarhola wrote: »

The elephant in the room is how much of that generous budget is being pissed away on Byzantine levels of highly unionised layers of superfluous overpaid jobs

Which jobs exactly are superfluous?

beauf · 30-10-2018 9:52am

They merged the health boards which should have created some duplication. But lost no jobs.

Also hospitals are one of those places that always claim to be busy but with lots of people wandering around not doing anything until you hassle them.

Nothing seems to happen until you create a fuss. Not everywhere but in some places.

Smiles35 · 30-10-2018 10:44am

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

If our hospitals weren't so old and unfit for purpose it wouldn't be such a massive problem. Temple Street and the Eye and Ear hospital were both built in the late 19th century and predate commercial cars. Neither are in a position to knock down surrounding buildings to put in a multi storey. Many other major hospitals don't have sufficient space either...what was fine in the 1960's is far from it now.

The numbers going through our hospitals now, none of them were built for it. The A&E and outpatient figures are staggeringly high. Plenty of hospitals would have sacrificed land/space over the years to expand or build new units also and all of them have a lot more staff to deal with the patient numbers than they would have done. The waiting time for a staff car parking space in Crumlin hospital is 10 years.

New 'out-patient' hospitals are being built, the one just recently built near me on the Greenhills Road in Tallaght is right beside one of those large retail parks that have the likes of a Homebase, Currys PC world .ect.

mvl · 25-11-2018 12:41pm

so it appears public debates on this subject get things moving -

https://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/revealed-hospital-car-parking-fees-to-be-capped-37561788.html

- would be looking forward to be allowed paying by app/text instead of expected to be carrying coins with me.

hospital parking fees

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