Demand for parking spaces is up at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, 325 Maine, as construction of a new three-story office building, shown here, and other expansion projects take away available spots. To help combat this, LMH is offering employees incentives to use alternative modes of transportation, like walking, taking the bus or riding a bike.

Lawrence Memorial Hospital is encouraging its employees to go green.

It’s an effort to help the environment and, at the same time, save parking spaces for patients and visitors as construction continues to eat up spaces.

“We can’t create new spaces, so let’s see if we can free up some places,” said Janice Early-Weas, director of community relations.

Beginning Sept. 1, the hospital will reward employees who use alternative means of transportation. LMH President and CEO Gene Meyer is urging the hospital’s 1,200 employees to use its new carpooling system or the city’s public bus system. Walking, bicycling or riding two-wheeled motorized vehicles also is encouraged.

In return, employees will earn a $5 gift card for the LMH cafeteria, movies, groceries or gasoline after every eight trips to work using alternative transportation.

“We decided to start the program because we want to create as many patient parking spots as we can,” said Deborah Thompson, vice president of human resources. “We have a shortage of parking because of the new construction, and we don’t want to encroach on our neighborhood, either.”

In March, LMH opened an 80,000-square-foot addition that includes the emergency room and maternity and intensive care. Construction is under way on a 42,000-square-foot surgery center set to open in March 2009, and ground recently was broken on a three-story medical office building.

There are about 850 parking spaces at LMH’s main campus. During a typical weekday, more than 500 employees and 75 volunteers work at the hospital, which serves about 500 patients each day.

Dr. David Goering, a hospitalist, already uses his bicycle to make the three-mile trip to work, for exercise and to save gas money. He also gets a close parking spot, something that doesn’t always happen when he drives to work during inclement weather.

“The doctors’ parking lot has really contracted, and so we want to make sure that we are not taking up spaces for patients,” he said.

Goering supports the incentive program that will be offered to all of LMH’s employees, even those who work at LMH South and in surrounding towns.

“I think whatever we can do to help the employees save some money by biking and not burning up gas and saving the parking spaces for the patients is good.”