🚗 What's your experience of disabled parking spaces at hospitals?

Nowadays, there doesn't just seem to be a problem finding a disabled parking bay, but it's gotten to the point where in some places, even finding a regular parking spot is almost impossible.

I went to visit a relative in hospital on Saturday and it was absolutely bliss - I had absolutely no problem getting in a disabled parking bay and even if I had, there's a car park with standard parking bays just behind it, so it wouldn't have been a massive error.

However, I've been to that same hospital during the weekday where you're driving around in circles for what seems like forever and there aren't even any standard spaces available or if there are, the cars either side are so big, it would be a struggle to get out of the car because the bays are too small.

One of the hospitals I go for appointments has recently had a new multistorey car park built, but it's not been a quick process to say the least.

Hospital staff were strongly encouraged to park & ride, but honestly, if you're working a 10 or so hour shift, that's the last thing you want to have to do.

The last time I was there, as I had a 1.5 hours drive to get to the hospital, I set a couple off a couple of hours earlier than I normally would to make sure there was a space. I live in quite an isolated place, so all my hospital appointments are roughly an hour or so away. My gut feeling is that we're going to be in the same scenario in another X years time where they're having to shut that self same car park for up to a couple of years just to accommodate for more vehicles. So why on earth didn't they just cut out the middle man and add double the amount of spaces to begin with? 😅