Access to the East Kootenay Regional Hospital is now easier and more convenient thanks to a new transit shelter opened at the facility Tuesday.

The solid metal shelter with a curved transparent roof was officially opened in a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by Jason Giesbrecht, IHA Health Services Administrator and Cranbrook Mayor Scott Manjak and several other local officials.

The shelter is located adjacent to the main parking lot and less than 100 feet from both the emergency entrance and the main doors of the hospital making it accessible for almost everyone including wheel-chair patients.

The shelter will be serviced by the Cranbrook Transit system seven-days-a-week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 9:15 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the weekends.

The facility is “a good news item” for Cranbrook residents for a number of reasons, says Mayor Manjak. “Accessibility to the hospital is very important to residents and this helps to answer that and we’re also talking about utilization of transit and going towards a carbon-neutral plan for this community and transit is a key component of that.”

Manjak says the transit shelter evolved from discussions by the City’s Cranbrook in Motion Committee which Giesbrecht sits on representing the IHA. The hospital also has its own “Green Team” or Green Committee, which helped move the project along.

It’s also hoped the new transit shelter and the seven-day-a-week bus service to the hospital will encourage more Key City residents to make use of the transit system, said the Mayor.

“I don’t know what the latest numbers are but my expectations are that it will continue to grow. Will it put more people on the buses? I hope so. It should because the more of these stations that you have -- businesses, hospitals, health care and recreational facilities – it will hopefully encourage more people to use them.

“When we look at the bigger picture, there’s great value in transit services,” said the Mayor.

Meanwhile Giesbrecht says the project was a joint venture between the IHA and the City and took about 18 months to come to fruition. The location of the shelter was critical to its success, he says.

“It’s close to the front entrance and appropriate for the flow of traffic into the building and the flow of traffic to the parking lot.” The shelter’s location should also encourage high use of the facility, Giesbrecht says.

“It will make it easy for folks to use city transit to access the hospital and the distances from the transit shelter to the door are not great and, in fact, better than most parking spots and we’re hoping more people will use it.”

Giesbrecht says the IHA Green Team will be working hard to provide incentives and promotions for hospital staff to use the transit system as well as the general public.