Hospitals in KW

[the_conestoga_guy]

If you don't build a hospital that's easily accessible by transit, then you're only signalling to your constituents that you only care about them if they're able to afford a car. It's not particularly equitable to force someone on ODSP to pay for a cab to get to an appointment. I'm sure, in a perfect world, we could build out an area with heaps of surface parking AND rapid transit access. But if we're forced to choose between the two, I'm picking transit access 100% of the time. In reality, a site like the Aud lands makes perfect sense if we're building the Phase 3 Ion along Ottawa, and we're able to build multi-level parking garages instead of surface lots.

Using LHSC as an example to justify a sprawling campus is funny, because London is one of the worst cities in Ontario for its lack of public transit investment. We shouldn't be placing it on a pedestal and praising it as an example of hospital design.

I actually don't mind the UW north campus as a location (assuming UW also gets to build out a medical faculty). It would benefit from being adjacent to the ION, and it's pretty easy to access from the highway (assuming traffic lights are given priority to emergency vehicles). Plus, access to the local environmental amenities could be great for the patients.

To add to this, transit access needs to be given priority.

Not only do many people need to rely on public transit for attending appointments, so does the hospital's staff. If we're being presented an opportunity to locate one of the Region's largest employers, why would we choose to force the staff to drive if we could instead move them by transit? Of course the surgeon on-call is going to opt to drive their Audi, but that doesn't mean the nurses and PSWs and support staff need to drive to get to their scheduled shift.

This issue is further compounded by the affordability crisis we're facing. PSWs, for instance, are paid low wages to begin with. We shouldn't force them to own and maintain a car just to get to work, when they could instead save that money for food and rent.

Honestly, there's no debate to be had here.