Hypothetically what if they gave $5,000 to each employee and then charged $200/month for on-site parking versus free or nominal fee off site parking? I'm a health care worker. I worked my ass off through the pandemic and I work 12 hour shifts. I'd take that bargain in an instant.

If pricing and incentives were well calibrated and (extremely importantly) well communicated, I bet magically there would be plenty of on site parking for employees who want it, patients, and less congestion down Main and Washington. Adding more parking would actually worsen the horrible congestion on those roads at peak hours.

$47M is over $20,000 per employee

Hypothetically: What if they gave each employee $5000 but then charged each employee $200/month to park on site, or the employees could park for free or nominal cost at a more distant lot served by a shuttle?

The congestion going to and from the hospital is already insane. Hartford needs more modern, thoughtful transportation solutions.

Right, I went to med school at UConn so I recall the parking and traffic situation well. In fact I rode my bike to my rotations at Hartford Hospital most of the time because traffic was so frustrating, and winding up and down 5-6 floors of parking garage was a totally awful experience especially at rush hour.

I think instead of spending this enormous sum of money on parking, they should invest a MUCH small amount of money and effort into a more cohesive modern parking/transportation policy. This should mean appropriately pricing parking for employees and using market techniques to ensure that there is always parking available for families. They can aggressively price employee parking while promoting carpooling and transit use, especially since many people in healthcare have shifts that start at 7 AM and end at 7 PM. They can operate shuttles from the innumerable parking lots 1-2 miles away in the downtown core, again with a major financial kickback to the employees. There's a LOT of opportunity to encourage transit and carpooling with employees -- they have 2,000ish employees and $47,000,000 divided by 2,000 is over $20,000 per employee. There are so many things they can do to thoughtfully utilize the parking that already exists in the city, and save millions of dollars for the true mission of the hospital.

I'm not saying they should spend $0 on parking. But come on. They're spending $280 million on the hospital tower and $47 million on parking. That ratio seems way, way off. The hospital exists to serve people, not cars.

There is a ton of parking in the area already. Hartford has been decimated by parking. The money could really be better used. Part of the hospital's role should be to improve the health of its community. In fact I'd argue it is their primary responsibility. It's why hospitals get extensive tax breaks and other preferential treatment. I think most people in healthcare could tell you, the systemic and environmental factors are enormous factors in the health of the community. Money wisely spent on public health is probably vastly more effective than money spent on... A parking garage

New Haven. You can take the express train which is 100ish minutes to the city and back. Driving from New Haven to West Hartford is 45 minutes.

Hence why I mentioned the west end

West Hartford is so much better for the things you are looking for. The west end of Hartford is also decent and much cheaper. It’s very walkable and Elizabeth Park is right there.

Art Cinema

This goes right back to the thread I made a couple weeks ago about people commonly going 100+ on the highways. It's terrifying!

I didn't choose the pension option but I guess it's nice to have for people who don't want to monitor their own investments.

To get the healthcare benefit after retirement you have to pay 3% of your gross salary into the healthcare fund for 15 years. It's quite a chunk of change

Let me guess, they all drive $50K pickup trucks?

I'm a state employee. The current pension is not very generous at all. In fact it's downright stingy. I think it's 0.13 x years of service after 10 years of service starting at age 65 and they take 5% of your gross salary per year to fund it. It's really not that great and you can do a lot better with average S&P500 returns. People who started earlier in state employment had much better terms. They can't really renege on prior obligations without bankruptcy, but future obligations should be much more reasonable. The 401k-style plan is pretty attractive so I think the state is trying to encourage most to avoid the pension in the future. Most of my coworkers I've spoken to have not chosen the pension plan