I took my mother to an appointment at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre on Wednesday March 4 (please assume that since the appointment was at the Cancer Centre she is not well. She is 82 years old.)

Her appointment was at 320pm. We pulled into the parking lot at 220pm (as per our parking ticket). Circled the parking lot for 25 minutes waiting for an available stall. We had not pulled into the lower level parking lot as it was obvious many cars were circling down there. The overflow parking lot, that is a great distance from the Tom Baker Centre had a long line of cars waiting to get into it. We eventually followed people exiting the hospital to their car and managed to park.

Upon leaving the hospital to pay we were well aware that we were paying for an extra 25 minutes of time that we weren’t actually parked.

I would simply suggest that you allow significantly less staff parking in the parking lots. As staff is not ill, healthy, able bodied people (unless they have a handi-capped parking stall), and as they are attending work for a long period of time they do not need to occupy parking stalls in the available lots that should be used for patients and people will shorter parking periods (appointments or visitors). Public Transit or even hospital shuttles could be a solution. If staff gets parking paid on their behalf, offer them a transit pass. If you are not willing to do that then at the very minimum all staff that for whatever reason get a parking staff should at the very least be in the overflow parkade not the main lot.

Parking is a HUGE problem at foothills hospital for sure.