Take multiple measures to solve the parking difficulties in hospitals
There are too many cars and the difficulty of parking in hospitals in many cities, which annoys many patients and their families.
Recently, the reporter went to many places to conduct interviews and investigations.
In the morning rush hour, a long convoy lined up in front of the hospital
At 9:45 am on October 19, at the entrance of a large hospital in a certain city, vehicles waiting to enter the hospital lined up into a "long dragon" of more than 300 meters.
In the convoy, a number of traffic police and security guards maintained order, and many drivers rolled down the windows and watched from time to time.
"Get up early and catch a late episode. I really have no temper." The owner Wu Gang queued for more than an hour and finally got to the entrance of the hospital parking lot.
At 7 o'clock in the morning, he took his sick wife and set off from home. Originally, he thought that going out early would avoid the line up, but he did not expect that the hospital was already full of cars.
Here, the difficulty of parking in hospitals has become the "old problem".
The reporter ran to 5 hospitals in the urban area of the city that morning, and there were long lines at the door of their houses.
At 8:25 a.m., on the highway at the entrance of another hospital, vehicles queuing to enter the hospital and vehicles in the morning rush hour were crowded together. On the mobile phone map, nearly 400 meters of the road was marked in deep red, which represents severe congestion.
"Basically, there are no parking spaces in the hospital. Only one car can be entered." The director of the security department of this hospital said that there are more than 1,000 parking spaces of various types in the hospital, and five to six thousand vehicles come by every day. Especially during the rush hour from 7 am to 8 am, there are more than 900 vehicles waiting to enter the hospital. "Under normal circumstances, after 8 am, the parking lot has less than 200 parking spaces for medical vehicles."
After 8 o'clock in the morning, the morning rush hour of traffic is also the time when the outpatient flow of the hospital is most concentrated.
Outside the gate of a hospital in the center of a city, on the outer lane from east to west, there is a long queue of vehicles that need to pass through a continuous flow of non-motorized vehicles to enter the gate, and there are also temporary parking to drop off passengers in the middle. And vehicles that are eager to leave or enter without seeing the signs.
Outside the gate of another hospital, the "Parking space is full" sign had long been hung up.
The auxiliary police and hospital security immediately waved to drive away when they saw the vehicle, but there were still vehicles approaching and asking if there was a parking space.
"Patients are uncomfortable and inconvenient to take public transportation. You can drive by yourself. There are few parking spaces in the hospital and there are one-way streets around. Finding a parking space often has to go around several times, and sometimes you have to stop. Walking back one or two kilometers away, if you park on the side of the road, you will be fined for taking pictures. It’s really a headache.” said Ms. Tian, who drove her father to the doctor.
Large hospitals are mostly in the city center, with limited parking spaces
During an interview in a certain city, the reporter found that many well-known top three hospitals are concentrated in the central city, where every inch of land is very expensive, and the parking spaces that can be adjusted are very limited.
The surrounding areas are mostly old residential areas and narrow roads. Traffic jams and parking difficulties are almost common problems faced by these hospitals.
According to reports, the problem of shortage of parking spaces in hospitals is firstly due to the continuous increase in outpatients and inpatients in recent years.
A hospital in this city receives up to 25,000 patients and family members every day during the peak period of winter and summer vacations. However, there are almost no parking conditions in the hospital. The entrance road is only two lanes wide. The peak motor vehicle flow in the morning and evening peaks reaches 650 to 700 vehicles per hour, exceeding The parking demand for 400 vehicles cannot be met.
Many citizens choose to park their cars in parking lots around the hospital.
Mr. Zhang, who brought his children to the children's clinic of a hospital, parked his car in the parking lot of a nearby hotel. "Although the charge is more expensive, it is better than waiting in a long line at the entrance of the hospital."
A similar situation is common in several large hospitals in the city. The parking lots of many nearby units have become "standby parking lots" for the hospitals, which puts a lot of pressure on parking for this unit.
According to a security guard at a hotel near a hospital, more than 70% of the cars parked in the hotel’s parking lot go to the hospital, and sometimes guests cannot find a parking space.
"The main reason for the difficulty of parking in hospitals is that there are too few parking spaces in each hospital. Especially some hospitals located in the city center have limited land, so there are not many reserved parking spaces." Tsinghua University Transportation Li Ruimin, director of the Institute of Engineering and Geospatial Information, said that in recent years, the number of cars has continued to increase, hospital parking facilities have failed to follow up in time, and parking problems have gradually become prominent.
"The uneven distribution of the time for patients to see a doctor has also exacerbated the problem of parking difficulties." Li Ruimin said, "There is an obvious morning peak phenomenon when going to the hospital for medical treatment. Everyone has the psychology of rushing early and not late, resulting in a high demand for parking in the hospital during the morning peak hours. This has also exacerbated the problem of difficult parking in hospitals."
To improve hardware facilities, we must also use our brains to improve efficiency
In order to alleviate the difficulty of parking in hospitals, many hospitals are trying to tap the potential from within.
According to Qiu Wangmei, director of the Security Department of Zhongshan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, the fundamental way to solve the parking problem is to increase parking spaces and upgrade hardware facilities.
Zhongshan Hospital is one of the major hospitals in downtown Shanghai that has a relatively good parking experience for patients.
When the courtyard started the construction of the east courtyard area across the road, a three-story underground garage was designed, 80% of which were three-dimensional parking racks.
In 2014, after the completion of the East Campus, the hospital suddenly added more than 600 parking spaces to the outside world. In addition to the more than 100 original parking spaces in the West Campus, the problem of "difficult parking" has been fully alleviated.
It is understood that the third phase of the hospital is under construction, and the reserved underground garage area is larger. It is expected that parking will not be so difficult after the opening.
Many hospitals in Wuhan are also building large parking garages.
For example, the Union Hospital of Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology started construction of an underground two-story parking lot not long ago. It is expected to be completed by the end of September next year, and nearly 400 parking spaces will be added; Zhongnan Hospital is also building an underground garage with a total of about 400 on three floors. It is planned to build multiple underground garages within 5 years, and strive to make all the vehicles that come to see the doctor park in the underground garage.
However, the construction of a parking garage not only requires a long construction period, but also takes up a lot of building area. Some hospitals are located in busy cities and the land is already very tight. It is not realistic to build a parking garage on a large scale, so they have used their brains in the allocation of parking spaces. Some canceled the parking concession for employees in the hospital, and instead rented a parking lot for employees to park outside, leaving more parking spaces in the hospital for patients.
There are also efforts to ease the rapid passage of vehicles to reduce the time of vehicle congestion, such as increasing traffic guides, increasing internal signage lines, installing mobile phone scan code payment facilities, and setting stop-and-go temporary parking spaces.
According to Wang Debin, director of the Security Department of Wuhan Zhongnan Hospital, Zhongnan Hospital has stipulated that from July 1 this year, all employee vehicles in the medical area will be charged at the same hour as social vehicles. The hospital rents 200 in the underground parking lot of a nearby theater. A parking space for employees to park their vehicles, and a monthly parking subsidy will be given.
Improve the hospital's refined management level and strengthen cooperation with functional departments
To alleviate the "difficult parking" and improve the order of the hospital and its surroundings, in addition to strengthening the management of the hospital and taking multiple measures simultaneously, it also requires the cooperation, scientific planning and fine management of the traffic management, urban management and other departments.
The Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai has nearly 800 parking spaces, but it is basically operating at full capacity during working days.
In 2019, the hospital parked more than 900,000 social vehicles, an average of more than 2500 vehicles per working day, an increase of 11% over 2018.
In order to maintain a good parking order, the underground garage accounts for half of the more than 200 security guards employed by the hospital.
Each security guard is equipped with a walkie-talkie to contact the security guard at the entrance and exit and the supervisor of the garage in a timely manner. Information such as which area has vehicles leaving the garage and whether to take diversion measures can be transmitted in time.
In order to resolve the traffic congestion around the hospital, Zhongshan Hospital and Shanghai Xuhui District Traffic Police Detachment jointly established a traffic auxiliary police Zhongshan team, cooperated with the local Fenglin police station to establish a police office, and worked with Fenglin Street in the community to implement the implementation of Comprehensive management, the five surrounding roads are designed as a single lane, so that vehicles will drive clockwise around the hospital to ensure orderly traffic.
Xu Zhiguo, deputy director of the Security Department of Zhongshan Hospital, told reporters that the morning is usually the time when the admission vehicles are concentrated, and there are more vehicles leaving the hospital after 4 pm.
Based on this feature, they implemented time-based management of road entrances and exits, which served as the entrance in the morning to share the problem of vehicle backlog; when the number of vehicles leaving in the afternoon increased, the partition was adjusted and the entrance became an exit.
Big data is also an important help in managing parking difficulties.
In the past two years, Shanghai Xuhui, Jing’an and other districts have successively established urban comprehensive management information data platforms. At the end of August this year, a unified “municipal public parking information platform” has been established. At present, 890,000 parking spaces have been connected. Information on street roads and parking spaces is the focus.
Tianping Street in Xuhui District has also developed the "Tianping Homeland · Otolaryngology Hospital Parking Guidance System". By means of appointment text messages and on-site scanning of QR codes, citizens can obtain parking guidance in time.
"Relevant departments should strengthen the connection between public transportation and hospitals, reasonably set up public transportation stations, increase operating routes and train times, and encourage medical patients to travel by bus or subway." Li Ruimin suggested.
A staff member of the People’s Hospital of Wuhan University said frankly: “To truly solve the problem of parking in hospitals, we must make great efforts to implement hierarchical diagnosis and treatment so that high-quality medical resources are no longer concentrated in a few large hospitals.”
Our reporter Jiang Hongbing Cheng Yuanzhou Jin Zhengbo Liu Botong