Pete Responds – JVH Not a Visigoth, just lacks Humanity

Here is Pete’s reply to my comments on his National Health Service concerns about “free” parking. JVH

In response to your blog below “Pete Takes a Swing at JVH” I have just now realized how futile that endeavor truly is. But I would never call my editor a Visigoth in print, even if I thought he was one.

Although many of your comments obviously make sense, you are looking at the issues from an American perspective, as is your right. As the Technology Editor of Parking World, I have to take a higher level global view, however – a citizen of the world.

All of your arguments are against the premise that universal healthcare is based on. While I do agree that there can still be debate on this topic in the US, the debate is already over in the UK. They have chosen universal healthcare, and in my opinion we have to look at it from a UK perspective. Since you are against universal healthcare, it makes sense that you oppose subsidized parking for UK hospitals. Since they already have universal healthcare, however, it seems absurd to me that they would not treat healthcare parking in the same manner as the healthcare services themselves.

The reason I claimed that my response was in the queue was not that you are predictable – I was actually surprised by how hard you continue to fight against the poor and unfortunate. (That last one was just a joke, please do not quote that line in your next blog). It was just because I had some commentary from others, even people you respect, that agree this is a matter of compassion.

“We are strongly opposed to hospital car parking charges being re-introduced in Scotland and Wales,” says Mike Hobday, Head of Campaigns at Macmillan Cancer Support, in reference to the BPA’s Master Plan for Parking. “This would be an enormously retrograde step. Charging vulnerable cancer patients while they are at hospital receiving life-saving treatment causes financial hardship and needless distress and is nothing more than a tax on illness. The BPA needs to remember who hospitals were built to serve.”

Also, to quote the esteemed correspondent Peter Guest in Parking Today‘s June 2010 issue, “Chronically ill people are often unable to work, and if they have to attend hospital several times a week, the charge could simply be unaffordable to someone surviving on a small disability allowance. Similarly, hospitals were asked to use both common sense and a little basic humanity when dealing with those who are visiting seriously or terminally ill patients. The last thing someone needs having sat with a dying relative is to find that they have to pay a big parking charge or indeed even a fine.”

To me, the key word is: humanity.

But we are looking at it from two totally different perspectives – US vs. UK. Shall we say: agree to disagree?

Pete Goldin

Actually, Pete, we can’t. Just because someone has a “different perspective” doesn’t make them right. It may mean that they are standing in the wrong place. The debate may be over but it’s pretty certain that the problems still exist. So let’s just talk about parking, and put the issue of “National Health Service” on hold for the moment.

First a comment from another “citizen of the world,” Paul Barter, parking and urban planning expert who lives in Singapore:

I am with JVH and the BPA on this one. Here is another way to think about it. What is the core ‘mission’ of the NHS? Surely the purpose of the NHS is health and medicine, not transport and certainly not parking. Providing a travel allowance to a small proportion of clients, such as chronically ill patients and their care givers, can be justified as in line with the mission. Some of the recipients would use such an allowance to help with their parking costs, if they drive. However, providing free-of-charge parking for all visitors and all staff at hospitals, paid for from the NHS budget, seems to me to be way outside the mission and a misuse of taxpayer’s money. After all, NHS does not pay for anyone’s bus tickets or taxi fares does it?

PB

Compassion has limits, too. If we “issue” equal parts of compassion to everyone on the planet, how can we possibly keep up? If we see “free parking” as compassion, where does it stop. Paul is correct that certainly complimentary parking can be given, out of compassion if you will, to those in need. However to simply give it to everyone out of hand means that we are going to run out and no one will be able to park. My disabled parker issue is a classic example – out of compassion we gave “Free” parking to the disabled, and now the disabled have no place to park.

Here in our insular America most urban hospitals charge for parking, the inhuman curs. However they also, in many cases, as Paul points out above, have a validation program so that those in need (cancer patients on chemo, visitors to the dying, etc) can get their parking “free.” Most people pay, but those who have a need, don’t.

How do we take a limited resource, parking, and allocate it fairly. Should a doctor be “guaranteed” a space, what about an ER nurse. There are only 1000 spaces but 1500 people need to park. How do we control the situation? When you give something away “free” people flock to use it, even when they don’t need it. Your compassionate buddy at Macmillain Cancer Support simply wants parking for free. He has no solution to the larger problem of how to control parking and how to pay for the parking structures. His compassion is blinding him to reality and frankly he doesn’t really care. He has a compassionate goal, the rest of the world be damned.

Peter is right, too. Bureaucracies that are built in the “citizen of the world” land are typically “all or nothing.” Its “free” or you pay. No middle ground – it wouldn’t be “fair.” Someone would have to make a decision as to who gets free parking and who doesn’t and of course if you didn’t “choose wisely” you could be accused of being uncompassionate, like me, and no one wants that.

We can never do things with common sense, as Peter requests. If we did, we would help those who truly need, and support those who can make it on their own. But then, as Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Iceland, Finland, and the rest slowly sink into anarchy, they can always say – at least they were compassionate.

JVH