Page 2346 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 August 2006
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with some of the pressure that is being experienced at the hospital. As you know, paid parking commenced at TCH on 14 August and it will come in at Calvary on 4 September. I have taken notice of the concerns about access to public transport to the hospital. I have done a bit of research. There is quite considerable public transport going from various locations. I can list the suburbs if members are interested. I am sure they are.
We have buses going from Ainslie, ANU, Barton, Braddon, Bonython, Calvary Hospital, Calwell, Canberra Hospital, Causeway, Chisholm, Deakin, Dickson, Fadden, Farrer, Forrest, Fyshwick, Garran, Gilmore, Gowrie, Hackett, Hughes, Isaacs, John James Hospital, Kingston, Macarthur, Manuka, Mawson, Narrabundah, O’Connor, O’Malley, Phillip, Reid, Richardson, Symonston, Turner, Wanniassa and Yarralumla. All of those suburbs have buses going on direct routes to the Canberra Hospital on a half-hourly basis. Also, a number of buses leaving from the city, from Belconnen, from Woden and from Tuggeranong go past both of the hospitals.
If I can just give you an update of how it went on the day. There was a bit of a rush between 8.30 and 9.30 on the first morning. Things did settle down after that. There was no problem at shift changeover time, which was an area I was concerned about. The morning staff do not go home until 4.00 but the evening staff come on at 1.00. But I was concerned that there may be pressure in the allocation of visitors to staff parking, but that has gone very smoothly.
There has been visitor parking very close to the hospital at all times this week, because of the changed arrangements. Some feedback coming to me has been that people have been able to park, and park close to the hospital. As you know, there has been a criticism of parking at the hospital. Visitors have not been able to get car parks close to the hospital. There have been comments that the staff who have been providing support to people to understand the system—I think we have had 10 people working at the Canberra Hospital all week—have been really well received and have been very helpful. As you know, the car park near emergency is visitor car parking. It was always only two hours visitor car parking. With the pressure, emergency bays have been established for emergencies where people can pull over, drop off and then go and find a car park, which is what they were doing beforehand. People were not able to just park at emergency, leave their car and not return.
Overall, paid parking has gone very smoothly this week. A lot of work has been put in—advertising in the paper, information to staff and visitors to the hospital. When constituents have contacted me with concerns or wanted further information about how they access the exemptions regime, we have been able to provide that information. We are still to roll it out in Calvary in a couple of weeks, but overall I am confident the work has been done to ensure that it will be implemented in a very seamless fashion. Of course, we are expecting a revenue of $800,000-plus. That will depend on the usage of the car parks and the time the new car park opens which we are hoping will be—
Mr Mulcahy: It was $500,000 before, now $820,000.
Mr Smyth: $720,000, $800,000.
Mrs Dunne: And then it was a million.
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