“Our healthcare workers in Seattle are fighting hard for all of us during this challenging time and we need to do everything we can to make their jobs easier,” said Mayor Durkan.
Today, Mayor Durkan announced a new Hospital Staff Parking Permit Program which will give healthcare workers access to free on-street parking around hospitals and testing sites.
We worked urgently to meet the increased need for employee parking near these critical locations as healthcare workers drive to work in order to minimize their exposure to COVID-19.
“We want to make sure that healthcare workers can focus on delivering care to those who need it most. No healthcare worker should spend an extra ounce of energy worrying about parking before they work a long shift to care for our community.” said Mayor Durkan.
After hearing from Harborview Hospital and Seattle Children’s Hospital on the need to allow their staff to park on-street near their facilities, we, along with Seattle Police Department (SPD) and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), developed and implemented a temporary 30-day hospital-staff-only permit program on designated streets around hospitals and testing sites.
We’re doing everything we can to work with healthcare providers during this crisis, developing solutions that help them meet their needs. In this case, healthcare workers needed to change how they get to work in order to reduce their exposure to COVID-19 and facilitate different work schedules,” said Sam Zimbabwe, Director of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
The new temporary parking zones for healthcare employees will begin at select locations on Monday, March 30, 2020.
The new permit program will be initially available to staff at:
- Harborview Medical Center,
- Kaiser Permanente,
- Seattle Children’s Hospital,
- Swedish Medical Center (Cherry Hill and First Hill campuses) and
- Virginia Mason Medical Center.
We’re working directly with representatives from these institutions to issue the permits.
To build additional parking capacity, SDCI temporarily suspended the parking restrictions on healthcare providers and essential staff necessary to healthcare institutions.
This applies to parking garages and lots on an institution’s grounds as well as parking leased in nearby garages and lots for the same purpose.
Mayor Durkan and Governor Inslee have continued to plead with the federal government for additional resources to ensure healthcare workers and first responders have the resources and equipment they need to respond to the growing COVID-19 outbreak.
Last week, Mayor Durkan issued a community call-to-action asking any businesses with access to personal protective equipment (PPE) to donate them so they can be re-distributed to healthcare providers. To date, there have more than 1,700 donations for first responders and healthcare workers with more items committed by donors.