North York General Hospital Parking Demand Forecasting

North York General Hospital in Toronto has over 400 beds. It treated over 225,000 outpatients and approximately 30,000 inpatients in 2019. It has nearly 4,000 employees.

The hospital has begun planning for a new Acute Care Tower addition and extensive renovations of the existing facility.

This will enhance and expand the services offered as well as making substantive changes to the patient care environment. Staff and patient numbers will increase by a fifth.

Constraints

The site has limited access and set boundaries. Traffic congestion on the site and at its access points onto the local highway is common. On several days in 2019 the current parking facility reached capacity, causing patient stress, lost appointments and a widespread drop in service. The new tower will not only increase parking demand, but it will occupy a site currently used by a parking garage.

How much parking?

Parking Perspectives created a demand model of all activity and events occurring on the site based on data gathered from 25 service lead interviews covering all hospital departments, clinical volume data, parking permit sales and aggregate staffing levels. Modelled outputs were successfully calibrated to reproduce the parking accumulations recorded at the facilities on the site across the day and for different days in the modelled year.

The model was used to forecast the parking demand and peak accumulation arising based on the forecast clinic volumes set out as part of the Master Program. The model has been used to test the impact of targeted reductions in car mode share for specific user groups, rescheduling or re-locating clinics and services, the value of technological solutions to improve utilization.

Initial design costs estimate that each additional parking space could cost up to $90,000. The model is supporting a business case approach to reduce cost and deliver best value.

Client: Plexxus

December 2020