Accessibility means more than plenty of parking

What if you don't have access to a motor vehicle or someone to drive you?

Public transit access was supposed to be evaluated in the planning process for our new single site acute care hospital. However, More Than Transit, a review of Windsor's public transit service, didn't start until the fall of 2018. Public engagement was conducted in March 2019 - long after Windsor City Council's August 2018 approval to develop Sandwich South. Without data regarding public transit and other forms of active transportation (such as walking and cycling) prior to the City's approval, accessibility concerns -- including the financial costs -- weren't formally addressed in the planning process. How could Windsor City Council possibly have been satisfied that the County Road 42 hospital site would meet residents' accessibility needs?

"More than Transit" Transit Windsor (TW) started a year-long multi-step overhaul in the fall of 2018:

Why a Transit Service Review?  "We’re looking at how transit can support the healthy growth and development of our neighbourhoods. We’re looking at more than transit. The year-long project consists of a review of Transit Windsor’s current network and ridership, existing policies, objectives, service standards and performance targets, as well as system and route performance. It also reviews operating and capital budgets, organization and staffing levels, fleet and facilities, and bus stop amenities including terminals." -- More Than Transit

A completely new public transit route network has been developed. It includes several new connections to the proposed County Road 42 hospital site, but no bus routes within the greenlighted 1,000 acre (400 ha) subdivision to its south - an area that is to accommodate thousands of residents and employees under the plan:

Active Transportation is walking, cycling and public transit This is important in our aging community, where as many as one in five households doesn't own a car. More young people than ever before are choosing to live car-free lifestyles. Windsor City Council received the city's new Active Transportation Master Plan(ATMP) on July 22, 2019. It’s an ambitious $150M plan to guide Windsor’s active transportation investments over the next 20 years. Cognitive dissonance: "very low" active transportation potential in Sandwich South The ATMP (p. 27) identifies Windsor's core areas (in dark blue) as having very high active transportation potential. In contrast, Sandwich South (the lower right quadrant of the map), where the proposed new single site acute care hospital is to be located, is identified as having very low active transportation potential:

This corroborates Windsor Airport's concerns (p. 297) about the feasibility of active transportation along County Road 42:

"Equity need": 14% of Windsor area households don't own a car The ATMP (p.28) describes Windsor neighbourhoods "where limited access to walking or bicycle facilities is compounded by socio-economic challenges."  Residents who can't afford to own a car rely on the least expensive forms of transportation: walking, cycling and public transit. The areas with the highest equity need are dark blue on the map below. There is a large pocket to the east of the city, though population density and absolute population are greater in the neighbourhoods closer to Windsor's downtown:

"It is also important to ensure that those with the highest need are given priority – this is equity. Seeking the input of underrepresented and vulnerable groups to help guide the design and construction of transportation infrastructure will help ensure that these facilities are reflective of the particular needs of these groups ... ... In areas with high equity need, car ownership rates are often quite low due to the expense of owning and maintaining a vehicle. The City should ensure that these areas receive targeted pedestrian, cycling, and transit improvements. This will help ensure that residents of these communities have access to pedestrian facilities that support them in their movements around their community on foot, and allow them to safely move around their neighbourhood without requiring a vehicle to do so." -- Walk Wheel Windsor: Active Transportation Master Plan Final Report

Conflicting priorities for active transportation The current hospital campuses are easy to reach on foot, by bike or by bus.

The 1C is TW's most frequent and heavily used route today: It stops at both Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) campuses, as well at Hotel-Dieu/Grace Tayfour. Several other current bus routes also serve these sites.

In contrast, the proposed hospital location on County Road 42 (15km from Ouellette Campus) will be almost impossible to reach on foot or by bike. The east-west E.C. Row Expressway and the north-south arterial roads are unsuited to walking and cycling.

The ATMP (p.11) explicitly identifies bike lanes and sidewalks south of County Road 42 as very low priority:

Consider this: Erie Shores Healthcare in Leamington (pop. 28k) is more accessible for Kingsville (pop. 22k) residents -- a 12km distance -- than a hospital on County Road 42 will be to the 100,000 people in Windsor's central neighbourhoods!

Unsustainable complexity: Financial and time considerations TW is not financially sustainable without municipal subsidies. It doesn't operate 24/7. How is it financially possible to take on the additional service to County Road 42 when riders are clamouring for improved service on existing routes, as evidenced by the feedback it received from its public engagement? How will it provide adequate service to its users -- the disabled, the elderly, young people and those who don't have access to a car or just don't drive? Today, a single ride bus fare is $3.00. How much more will it cost riders to take ANY bus if the new hospital is built on Windsor's outskirts? How is the cost gap going to be covered? An exurban single site acute care hospital will cost bus riders and taxpayers more, in money and time. Several connection routes to the County Road 42 hospital site have been proposed. Yet, they will add additional transfers and wait times for most people - - - extra travel time from most Windsor locations. And that's if the bus runs on schedule. Infrastructure like the extended transit network will be paid by Windsor taxpayers in perpetuity It is true that the County is contributing $92 million to the project. However, this is earmarked for hospital construction. If built as proposed, Windsor residents will be on the hook for hundreds of millions more - though tens of thousands of city dwellers will have greatly diminished hospital access. What was WRH's CEO thinking when he said this?

FACT: The people who most frequently go to hospital are its thousands of healthcare workers. Today, many live within walking or cycling distance. Not only is this healthier and more convenient, but they don't need to deal with parking.

Trips to the hospital for (some) day procedures, volunteer work and visits to in-patients are also possible by active transportation. Other accessible options overlooked Besides the County Road 42 farmland location, other potential urban hospital sites, some on existing bus routes, were proposed during the site selection process. These sites in developed areas of the City would not require significant resident-funded infrastructure improvements. This project will shape our community for the next half century. Yet, did the decision makers only pay lip service to public transit and other active transportation needs? To summarize: The ATMP identifies neighbourhoods where residents are most likely to be dependent on active transportation. Yet these areas are farthest from the location of the proposed new hospital. Transit Windsor proposes no bus routes south of County Road 42.  Bike lanes and sidewalks are explicitly identified as very low priority in Sandwich South. There is no insight into the anticipated costs to taxpayers - in perpetuity - of maintaining 24/7 public transit service to the proposed hospital site. Real active transportation planning appears to have been omitted in the approval process for our new $2 billion County Road 42 single site acute care hospital and the surrounding Sandwich South development. How does the City of Windsor consider this to be acceptable planning?

In their own words: Weekly round-up of comments from our friends and neighbours "My mom was in the hospital a few weeks ago, absolutely have no complaints about her care. My complaint is the rooms are not as clean as they should be, please don't blame it on the age of the facility" "If placing this in a more central location will cause it not to be built, what does this say about whether it was truly necessary to build it at all? Why would a change in location stop its construction, or support by the upper levels of government?" "Accessibility means more than how easy it is to get there by car " "Enclosed is a cheque for CAMPP legal fees. Here's hoping some resolution is achieved within the near future. Thanks for all your work." "Modest contribution enclosed. Wish it could be ten times as much." "We won't lose it. The hospital is good. It's the location that doesn't work." "And how does a hospital in the middle of nowhere- very inaccessible to those who rely on public or active transportation (which is predominantly the poor and elderly) -allow family and friends to provide a "familiar and reassuring presence"? The planning committee really bungled this one, minimizing built-in social interaction by design and making it next-to-impossible for the most vulnerable members of society to visit their hospitalized family and friends!" "I don't believe urban planning is central to the hospital argument, the hospital itself is. However, good overall urban planning makes sense and the hospital should be a part of that." "I will live 16 kilometers from the 'mega', if it is built at the proposed site. I doubt there is a single soul in Toronto who is that far from an emergency room. Our mayor and council are playing with our lives." "A major acute care hospital with an international airport at its doorstep raises issues. Windsor International Airport encompasses 2,200 acres, of which approximately 1,100 have been identified surplus and earmarked for a variety of aviation commercial, non-aviation and industrial (solar farm) development. Proposed residential accommodation south of that airport places that airport facility at the demographic hub or the critical core of a “Not So Smart City”." "one of the worst decisions our city has ever made" "So many longer trips will not be good for the environment. Or time or money." "We vote people into positions of authority because we 'think' they'll represent our best interests better than some other candidate. What we're really doing is voting them into 'power' to better represent the interests of someone 'other than' us. Any opposition to their agenda(s) is treated as disloyal, and they've all the money/power necessary to convince the masses/common law courts of their position. Thank God for those strong and wise enough to enlighten and encourage the rest of us to take action." "How the hell is my friend who has to go for cancer treatment get there. It will cost the taxpayers even more money. He thinking about moving to London." "why make things worse in the core? Going the wrong way. Check out Halifax, Nova Scotia has always kept a strong core, hospitals are kept there too." "I agree we need a new hospital but it makes no sense to close the existing hospitals in the core l. At least one should be left for acute/trauma. If you want to know why our hospitals are in such shitty conditions look no further than the CEO and board at WRH. They are not spending $ to properly maintain the existing hospitals in order to justify the new one. We still deserve well maintained hospitals in the meantime as it will take years to.build the new one WHEREVER that will be. Your hallway medicine won't stop if they are building the same amount of beds. We need more long term health care to get patients moving out and make room for new patients. A new building will not change this. It also won't change the fact that so many janitorial staff are laid off to keep the hospital clean. This doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize these things. Just a little common sense and compassionate reflection . Trust me, i have had experience as a patient and a caregiver. I had to clean my mom's area and take her for showers or she didn't get one. A new building won't fix that. We do deserve a new building but must not forget the vulnerable sectors within the City"

The countdown to our LPAT hearing is on

It takes place from October 8 to 10, 2019 We have only 6 weeks to raise another $37,000 to pay our legal fees. How you can help:

We need your financial support to pay for it.  We need $37,000 more to reach our fundraising goal of $100,000. Thank you to each and every one of you who contributed so generously to our legal fund since we launched this campaign in February 2019. Some of you have made multiple donations. One of our donors even shared a modest lottery win with us! Many of you donated anonymously because you didn't want your employer to know. Please help us reach our fundraising goal by donating what you can afford --- No amount is too large or too small. If you can only afford $10, that's fine as well. If you wish to donate anonymously, GoFundMe will allow you to do so. Some people prefer to donate directly. If you would like to do so too, please email our fundraising team for details.

Click here to contribute to or share our GoFundMe

A QUICK POLL: What's happening at the Grace site?

Photo taken Thursday, August 29th, 2019 at 4.15 p.m. The billboard states: "Future home of the proposed urgent care centre / main satellite facility."

Do you believe Windsor Regional Hospital is going to use the former Grace Hospital site on University Avenue for future health care services?  Yes No

In their own words: Weekly round-up of comments from our friends and neighbours

"Some people would like to see our existing facilities renovated, some would like to see a multi-hospital approach and most simply want to see a more urban location for the new single site hospital project. That said there are many voices and independent thinkers. Not everyone who opposes the plan is part of CAMPP just as not everyone who supports the location is a WRH employee. If someone in the community says “scrap the whole thing” I would say with absolute certainty that individual does not represent the majority nor does that represent the official stance of CAMPP in any way."

"I will always go with the quote from Tom Hunt [Chief Planner, City of Windsor] at the midnight hour that fateful [August 13, 2018] evening. “We don’t want to lose development to our bedroom communities”. Our administration simply has lost faith citizens will want to live in the city. They’d sooner move to the county. So we have a city council that doesn’t believe it’s city centre is worth living in."

"I find it astonishing that in the face of colossal infrastructure debt, crumbling infrustructure, wide scale flooding issues, economic instability and a massive aging population that @CityWindsorON continues to defend new development of 400hectares because...well because they can"

"Thom Hunt [Chief Planner, City of Windsor] knows the perils of sprawl. I’m sure if he wasn’t tied to council directives we’d be seeing very high quality work and progressive decision making. I certainly think Urban Planners should be given more power over decision making and should not feel threatened by undue pressure from various sources."

"It’s been a polarizing debate this far, the differences in opinion about the proposal are vast. I can see why some people might not understand why CAMPP is concerned with the proposal at all, and because of that I’d be happy to discuss my perspective with anyone who is interested."

"Montreal’s MUHC is a very interesting project. I particularly like how it was constructed on a brownfield plot with great transit connections."

"#ACCESSIBILITY is a #SOCIALJUSTICE issue. It’s one of the many issues why building what will be our only hospital away from the city’s most dense neighbourhoods is a very poor planning strategy. Lets #ReThink and plan with conscience and responsibility"

"Thank you. Great points.  The  financial burden  on windsor taxpayers is irresponsible and fraudulent,  to pay for a hospital  for the  county. We have higher  property taxes now and high utility costs, that keep rising, this is not  sustainable or reasonable  or  fair . Look at  the costs of Adventure Bay  for example. There  is a history of questionable  judgement benefiting  which groups? I can tell  you not the taxpayer."

We're going camping this week

Our communication team's  on holiday!

But we still have interesting content for you. As we do every week, we've been gathering opinions from friends and neighbours. We'd love you to read the selection we've put together. As always, we copied and pasted this week's comments exactly as they were written:

"So we should all endorse a flawed plan? For the sake of what- ensuring we get the city's current hospitals shut down and a hospital that is a both fiscal and environmental burden for citizens?"

"I am fed up with our elected politicians (MAYOR) taking us for a ride and disregarding our many voices of objection."

"No one elected CAMPP but many support them and what they are doing, me included. I don't want this Mega Hospital decision to turn into another Windsor Arena decision. If you take a step back and look at the project as a whole it doesn't make sense to build the hospital on the proposed location. The added infrastructure and services to support the area will have to be paid somehow and obviously Windsor can't even maintain the current infrastructure and services so why take on more. This deal seems shady by the people in charge but most people are blinded by a brand new shiny hospital which won't add services or beds to see through the veil."

"wake up..think of us who dont drive and our income is low"

"I completely understand the desire of county residents to be closer to a hospital. However, the tens of thousands of inner-city windsorites (many of whom do not have personal vehicles) that will now be further from healthcare thoroughly outweighs this. It’s just not fair or equitable for inner-city residents."

"You're building it to encourage urban sprawl when we should be building up not out. We need to reduce our impact on climate and this will have the opposite effect. There are so many reasons to oppose the site but people are only seeing it as a "it's only an x amount of time drive" but that misses the point that the current hospitals serve a population that doesn't have the privilege of a car or other things we take for granted. It's irresponsible to put it out there whole closing other sites. Keep the sites open or find land in the downtown are and use the "build it and they will come" argument to inspire a new breath of life into the downtown core that is so desperately needed."

"...thousands of acres of farmland are going to be developed and covered with concrete and asphalt in a city that struggles mightily with flooding as it is. Plus they're encouraging an entirely new neighbourhood be developed. Were talking major climate impact. I am not claiming to have a solution but I think this was rushed to try to secure funding. There's a reason there is a ton of pushback."

"It's a colossal mistake."

"The side that wants the hospital built on farmland basically has one argument: "I don't want to drive downtown and see crackheads". I have even seen founders of the Master Gardeners of Windsor support the sprawl. There are SO MANY empty fields within the urban zone of Windsor, paving over so much prime farmland and all the extra roads and the sprawl it will created for decades is unconscionable."

"Farmland is immeasurably important in sustaining our region and it’s incredibly shortsighted to keep gobbling it up. Especially when Windsor’s core has so much abandoned and derelict property. Build up, not out. Restore the interior, don’t abandon it."

"It’s worth taking the time to make sure it’s a location that will help the region over time, not hurt it."

"I also live outside of Windsor but I have to say it seems like the hospital should be in the core of the city. City residents pay higher taxes because they live near everything. When we choose to live outside the city because it is quieter and safer (or whatever reason), we have to accept that we have to drive into the city for a lot of things (including the hospital). You can't have your cake and eat it too."

"The Premier of Ontario can see that this does NOT make sense! STOP THE MEGA MISTAKE!"

"Good Luck CAMPP. This whole plan was poorly done and has really divided Windsor and the County. You've worked hard defending Windsorites on this location and I hope you are successful. "

"The Mega-Hospital project will have devastating effects on our economy and on our local ecosystem. We need to do everything within our power to oppose this development project. Urban Sprawl = post-collapse wasteland"

"I CARE about the poor, about those in central Windsor, who can't afford a taxi, or bus. I care about those people. The county gets 2 ERs, the city gets one?"

"Why build new infrastructure if there are areas that already contain it? the amount of urban sprawl that will occur if this hospital is built in the recommended location will have some negative impact on the city. The city can't even take care of the necessities with the size that it is now, which means that taxes will more than likely go up to maintain the infrastructure and services (fire, police, public transport). Windsor is 25% the size of Toronto, in km^2, but only 8% of its population."

"The Community Windsor will have to foot the Bill for all Infrastructure costs in the Hundreds of Millions. Yes the City which has the lowest Household income in the Windsor Essex Region. Windsor is lowest and Leamington is second lowest approx $60,000 approx $67,000 per year income. Tecumseh is the Highest at close to $100,000 and Lasalle approx $90,000. So yes the poorest community has to pay so the richest communities get better access."

"The plan to make Windsor more suburb than city simply isn't sustainable economically and environmentally. Windsor needs to get with the times."

"We didn't make the subdivisions developers did, at some point it needs to stop when all the farmland is paved over it will be to late. As a farmer it is getting increasingly harder to farm because of development."

"Between the population of Essex county and Windsor we both deserve a new hospital. People our age will have to relie on transit. Get there by bus at 9 am how do they get home at 3am when they are released?"