A green transportation initiative: secure storage for bikes at the Kootenay Lake Hospital

We celebrated this green transportation initiative in April 2024. Let me tell you why and how this initiative began.

Stardate:  Earth Day 2024 – April 22, 2024

Concept:   Staff at big healthcare facilities need secure storage for bikes

Issues:

• • biking is good
  • bikes need security and dry storage
  • exercise is good
  • the planet needs our help

Since serving as the Chief of Staff at Kootenay Lake Hospital from 2017-2022, I saw a big need for secure bike storage and promoting people-power transportation options: a green transportation initiative.

Initially, when the topic was raised, the usual bureaucratic and cost factor inertia blocked the way.  But I knew we needed to do better than just provide outdoor rack or railing locking parking for our e-bikes.

• Hospital staff need to unwind from a busy shift, to get on our bikes to think and release some tension as we travel home.
• We want to decrease our emissions as we build fitness into our busy days.
• We want to be part of a healthier workplace and a healthier world.

The hospital is such a busy place and the outdoor elements and lack of rigorous security discouraged folks from riding to and from their jobs and hospital rounds.

Finally, in 2023 with the help of a Facilities Engagement Initiative on Green Transportation Initiatives, we got the spark we needed to light the flame for getting the work done.

Administration agreed to carve out a space accessible from a ramped loading dock.   The health authority donated the square footage designed for 16-18 bikes and our group agreed to fundraise for the racks, equipment and wall necessary to make the space suitable and fully usable.

And we did it!  We moved the boulders and got the job done. Now I can commute to work on two wheels instead of four.

This is a big win for the environment!  It’s a human fitness upgrade! Our perseverance paid off.