The Great Calgary Parking Racket

The Calgary International Airport has just announced that it is doing away with the free half hour parking zone at the airport!  That first half hour will now cost you $3!  The only place you can park free while waiting for someone to arrive is in the cell phone lot.  But you have to stay in your car and there is a time limit! 

The days of greeting someone at the arrivals door are long gone!  I remember greeting relatives from Wales and helping them retrieve their luggage from the carousel. Not anymore!

Meanwhile at Calgary hospitals, parking is getting more expensive, too!  I've heard of families from out here paying many hundreds of dollars in parking fees to visit a critically ill family member.   On the day their loved one passes, the hospital will usually give a free parking pass for that day to those present at the time of the death!  That's a small consolation for the hundreds, perhaps thousands paid before!

If you're a Calgarian, you have options.  You can take a taxi which might be equally as expensive or take the bus or LRT, but us folks out here are hooped.  We've got to pay those high parking fees to pick up someone at the airport or visit someone in a hospital.

I guess I'll just have to accept the fact that if you live outside Calgary's city limits, you're a second class citizen, at least as far as parking at hospitals and the airport is concerned!

South Health Campus is great, but it's no Airdrie Hospital

A few weeks back I had an appointment at the new South Health Campus.  This is the new Calgary hospital located in the far south of the city.

Getting there was super easy; south on Stoney Trail and follow the "H" signs as you turn west.

There was a huge underground parking facility which is very easy to navigate.  All sections of the parking garage are given names like "Mountain" and "Forest," so it's easy to retrace your steps back to your car after your appointment.

Once in the hospital I was impressed by the quiet, serene atmosphere of the place.  I also noticed the place was absolutely spotlessly clean.  There was cleaning being done all the time we were there!

This is one beautiful hospital!

However, there is one huge problem with it.  It (or one like it) isn't in Airdrie!

Hospital Parking!

Photo courtesy of the Calgary Sun

The cost of parking at Alberta's hospitals and health care centres is appalling.  When one visits a family member or friend in a hospital in this province, they are subjected to artificially high parking fees!

There is no option but to pay up.  Visitors are a captive clientèle!  They need to visit their sick or injured friends or family members. Thee is nowhere else to park around many hospitals.  Many facilities do not have decent public transit access (which is moot for us out-of-towners, anyway).  You want to visit a hospital; you pay!

I have learned that in many cases the revenue generated by parking fees accounts for less than 1% of the total revenue for that hospital!  That appears to be a lot of hate and discontent generated over such a paltry contribution to the overall budget. 

I have also learned that some health facilities hire private companies to operate their parking facilities.  These companies are allowed to attach huge fines to those who park longer than they should.  In some cases that penalty fee goes directly into the coffers of the parking company - the hospital doesn't see a dime of that money.

I believe there should be a small fee for parking at a city hospital or medical clinic, but I think those  fees are getting completely out of hand!  Maybe our Minister of Health (Fred Horne) needs to check out this situation.