STAFF at John Hunter Hospital say it can take up to an hour to leave the health campus, despite recent attempts to ease the gridlock.
An online petition calling for Hunter New England Health (HNEH) to reinstate the park and ride shuttle between the hospital campus and Hunter Stadium has collected more than 2000 signatures. It says it is sometimes taking staff "an hour or more" to get off the campus onto Lookout Road.
A hospital staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Newcastle Herald she was regularly stuck in the hospital traffic for about 30 minutes, "at least". But there had been occasions it had taken 50 minutes to get from a staff car park to Possum Place - the on-site childcare centre.
"It does get very stressful when you have to pick up children from daycare or OOSH by a certain time, and you are just sitting in traffic, unable to move," she said. "Anywhere from 4 o'clock to 5.30pm, it's gridlock. It has taken me an hour-and-a-half to get home, and I live 5.9 kilometres away from work."
She said once you were on that one way road, you could not get off.
She had friends who had been charged late fees for being late to pick up children from daycare.
Another friend was forced to call other family members to pick up her children from daycare because she had been stuck in traffic on "multiple occasions".
She said recent traffic changes to allow drivers to turn both left and right at the Jacaranda Drive and Lookout Road intersection had eased some of the congestion, but there was still a bottleneck coming from the Ring Road onto Lookout Road most days.
Wallsend MP Sonia Hornery has moved a Notice of Motion in the NSW Parliament about the issue.
"The time for excuses and pinning hopes on very minor traffic changes fixing the issue is over," she said. "Staff know it, I know it. The one thing that is guaranteed to get traffic off the road is to give staff options to park and ride from Hunter Stadium."
HNEH's executive director of infrastructure and planning, Dr Ramsey Awad, acknowledged more needed to be done to improve traffic flow at John Hunter until the completion of the bypass.
"The John Hunter campus is one of the busiest healthcare campuses in NSW," he said.
"Peak hour traffic impacts heavily on Lookout Road causing delays stretching both north and south, which causes traffic congestion on the campus."
Dr Awad said traffic planning for the $780 million investment in the John Hunter Health and Innovation Precinct would deliver an expanded road network that includes a direct connection to the Newcastle Inner City Bypass interchange.
"While traffic congestion will not be fully resolved until the bypass is completed, we do recognise that shorter term solutions are needed in the meantime," he said.
"While the recent works, including an upgrade of the Jacaranda Drive exit to include a right hand turn lane, has had some impact on traffic flow, we acknowledge more needs to be done.
"We are currently considering strategies with the help of traffic consultants to identify additional improvements to traffic flow."
Dr Awad said there were no plans to reinstate the shuttle bus service, introduced to ease car parking pressure before an additional 700 car parking spaces were provided at the hospital in 2015.
"The shuttle bus transported a small number of people in the morning and afternoon peak times. Its return would have a minimal impact on reducing traffic congestion," he said.
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