PEEVED OVER PARKING
Nurse Chantelle Dolney, shown with colleague Adam Swalm, says with the pressures of dealing with the COVID-19 deluge, staff at Regina General Hospital should get a break from having to plug the city's two-hour parking meters on nearby streets.
While the city is under siege by a deadly virus, the last thing nurse Chantelle Dolney wants to think about is parking.
But if her car sits in the same spot for more than two hours on one of the streets surrounding the Regina General Hospital (RGH), she may find she has been given a ticket.
“Sometimes at that two-hour mark, when I'm supposed to be down moving my car, I could be in a COVID room, completely gowned up, sitting next to someone who's taking their last breath,” Dolney said.
The City of Regina is currently waiving parking meter fees downtown to support struggling businesses and to facilitate public health advice regarding curbside pickup. The city recently announced that drivers do not need to plug parking meters while picking up food and merchandise from downtown shops and restaurants until April 26.
Although two-hour parking limits remain in effect downtown, Dolney said she sees consideration being offered to businesses. She would like to see a solution offered to hospital workers as well.
Dawn Schikowski, the city's manager of licensing and parking services, says the challenge with the area surrounding the RGH is that it's not just health-care workers who park there. Those visiting local residents, businesses, or the hospital for reasons other than work, are also looking for a place to park.
“On-street parking is really designed for that short-term parker,” she said.
She added that there is active communication between the city and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) to “identify what options are available for nurses.”
One such option is the Park and Ride shuttle bus service, which ferries hospital staff to work from designated locations around the city.
For a time last year, the SHA altered the configuration of the main parking lot at the RGH. This was done to provide free parking stalls for Park and Ride users that preferred to drive directly to the hospital.
Those stalls are no longer available, and Dolney said the shuttle service is a poor option. It's time consuming, she said, describing one of the pickup locations as unsafe. She suggests the city could waive parking time limits along 15th Avenue near the hospital, or sell special, on-street parking permits to hospital staff.
Because where she might've once found a few minutes to sneak out and move her vehicle, she's now spending her time learning on the fly about medical situations she's never encountered in her 11 years on the job.
“It's honestly like starting over again, just the learning process.”
No change to parking arrangements for RGH staff are currently being considered by the city or the SHA.