To the editor;
Re: “Pay parking at hospitals criticized,” Feb. 12
It is not so much the pay parking I object to. It is the way it is charged.
I regularly visit the cancer clinic at Surrey Memorial Hospital. It used to be that you got a ticket, parked your car, and when leaving payed for the amount of time the car had been parked.
One of the problems I run into regularly is that I do not know ahead of time how much parking time I need. Sometimes I am actually in and out of the clinic in under an hour. Often I am there for over an hour, and rarely for over two hours. Once in, I have no opportunity to “run out to the meter and feed it” – which means I have to feed the meter enough so it doesn’t run out while I’m away from it.
So I pay for three hours... and am back in 45 minutes – that’s a cash grab of two hours-value. I get nothing for that except a lighter-weight wallet.
Why not go back to the old way, so we pay exactly for what we get? Even better if it was in 15-minute increments.
Until such time as this system is changed, I will not park at the hospital. I’ll bring my husband, who can go shopping while I’m in the clinic, and when I’m ready to be picked up, a cell phone call will bring him back within minutes. No extra cost for me, no cash grab for the hospital or parking company.
Esther Perry
Surrey
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