Whipps Cross University Hospital is a car-sick institution with a drug-addicted administration and staff.
It is an institution addicted to oil and car dependency. It's quite grotesque that this hospital, which is well served by public transport (a bus every 8 minutes) and a relatively short walk from Wood Street railway station, has 700 reserved car parking spaces for staff.
As I have pointed out before, the Health Trust makes the usual empty Green gestures, which don't amount to a hill of beans. The hospital site is a shambolic mess, devoted to car parking and hostile to cyclists. It is equally crap for pedestrians, not least those users of the footway who have a mobility handicap. These photographs show the main entrance to the hospital from Whipps Cross Road. Some moron has decided to stick this sign for drivers slap bang in the middle of the pavement, with no consideration at all for the needs of wheelchair users, people with mobility scooters, those with a visual impairment, or someone using crutches.
This kind of design breaks every rule in the book, yet though it is prominently positioned no one at the hospital has ever noticed.
This is a car-sick institution, run by a car-dependent board and administration which can't see beyond its collective steering wheels. What we really need is for a hundred cyclists to turn up outside with a large poster: Whipps Cross University Hospital Trust - discouraging cycling and walking and promoting car-dependency, obesity and ill-health.
Here are some pics I took yesterday when I was at the hospital, showing how cyclists are forced to resort to railings because the paltry cycle stand provision is inadequate:
