[andrewpmk]

So you are saying certain places (in this case Brampton ) should not have any offices or, for that matter, employment lands?

The GTA is way too spread out these days, that is the main problem, and it takes too long to get around the GTA because it is spread out and because the traffic is bad and the GO train service is poor. The fact that the traffic is worse going out of Toronto than in to Toronto strongly suggests that there is a shortage of jobs in Toronto for Toronto residents caused by excessively high commercial tax rates. I would say that if jobs are to be in the suburbs, it needs to be possible to commute from downtown Toronto in a reasonable amount of time, which means that there must be frequent reverse commute GO train service and that employers should whenever possible locate within walking distance of a subway or GO train line. If there were GO trains every 5 minutes both ways on the Georgetown GO train line and most of the office space in Brampton were at Queen & Main this would be much less of a problem and better GO train service would make long suburb to suburb commutes like Pickering to Brampton easier as well. Meadowvale Business Park claims to be 30 minutes from downtown but in rush hour this is laughable and it takes at least an hour. Obviously land intensive land uses like warehouses and factories may have to move to very distant suburbs to find land, but office buildings should never be located in outer suburbs that are poorly served by transit.

 

[TOareaFan]

The GTA is way too spread out these days, that is the main problem, and it takes too long to get around the GTA because it is spread out and because the traffic is bad and the GO train service is poor. The fact that the traffic is worse going out of Toronto than in to Toronto strongly suggests that there is a shortage of jobs in Toronto for Toronto residents caused by excessively high commercial tax rates.

Are we starting to slip from a discussion about smart growth into "how to fix/save Toronto tax base and maintain jobs in Toronto"......that topic is not the same as a smart growth discussion. In my experience, discussions with Toronto residents about high commercial tax rates in the city grind to a halt when the obvious fix of higher residential mill rates to allow lower commercial rates is raised.

I would say that if jobs are to be in the suburbs, it needs to be possible to commute from downtown Toronto in a reasonable amount of time, which means that there must be frequent reverse commute GO train service and that employers should whenever possible locate within walking distance of a subway or GO train line. If there were GO trains every 5 minutes both ways on the Georgetown GO train line and most of the office space in Brampton were at Queen & Main this would be much less of a problem and better GO train service would make long suburb to suburb commutes like Pickering to Brampton easier as well.

So, again, you are saying places like Brampton should never have offices as there is no transit plan that will ever deliver that 5 minute frequency of train service. Some day, maybe, there might be 15 - 30 minute frequencies but 5? Never.....so we better start ripping all of the offices out of all 905 communities (excl. VCC and RHC when they get their subway).

Meadowvale Business Park claims to be 30 minutes from downtown but in rush hour this is laughable and it takes at least an hour. bviously land intensive land uses like warehouses and factories may have to move to very distant suburbs to find land, but office buildings should never be located in outer suburbs that are poorly served by transit.

It is clear to me that you and I are operating with different working definitions of smart growth. Mine does not include allowing/encouraging/legislating the growth of a city to over half a million people but forbid them from developing a mixed economy and an office/white-collar employment base. Further, the condescending/superior "let them have the odd warehouse but no other jobs" is the worst form of planning and one that creates economic ghettos around cities.

 

[andrewpmk]

Are we starting to slip from a discussion about smart growth into "how to fix/save Toronto tax base and maintain jobs in Toronto"......that topic is not the same as a smart growth discussion. In my experience, discussions with Toronto residents about high commercial tax rates in the city grind to a halt when the obvious fix of higher residential mill rates to allow lower commercial rates is raised.




So, again, you are saying places like Brampton should never have offices as there is no transit plan that will ever deliver that 5 minute frequency of train service. Some day, maybe, there might be 15 - 30 minute frequencies but 5? Never.....so we better start ripping all of the offices out of all 905 communities (excl. VCC and RHC when they get their subway).




It is clear to me that you and I are operating with different working definitions of smart growth. Mine does not include allowing/encouraging/legislating the growth of a city to over half a million people but forbid them from developing a mixed economy and an office/white-collar employment base. Further, the condescending/superior "let them have the odd warehouse but no other jobs" is the worst form of planning and one that creates economic ghettos around cities.

By putting offices in areas that are an hour away from downtown in heavy traffic and which are poorly served by transit and have little potential to be served by transit you are just creating traffic problems, and long commutes for people who live elsewhere in the GTA. It takes 1 hour in heavy traffic to get from downtown to Meadowvale in rush hour. If more offices move there this commute will get longer and longer.

If you require offices in the suburbs to be near the GO station then there is the very least OK transit and better GO train service might be available in the future (every 5 minutes may be overly optimistic). This does not mean there will be no office jobs in Brampton, just that only certain areas will be zoned for offices. However I think that too many employers have moved to the suburbs relative to the number of people who want to live there. Having low commercial taxes and high residential taxes in the 905 and the reverse in the 416 encourages people to reverse commute in heavy traffic. More people commute into Mississauga than out which is hardly a desirable trend because most workplaces in Mississauga are office parks with poor transit.

Office buildings should be banned from areas like 407/Mississauga Rd which have zero potential for decent transit service. Only industrial areas should be permitted in this part of Brampton.

The GTA needs to be a single labour market i.e. it is easy to get around the GTA, and live in suburb A and work in suburb B without having to spend 2 hours driving in heavy traffic.

 

[Dandy Horse]

I think the a eason behind smart growth not happening is partially employers being greedy. employers who download the cost of buildings to employees, by locating work where land is cheap, due to having almost no services, expect the employees they already don't pay very much and probably psychologically abuse daily, to pay even more; money for cars, and two hours a day often of unpaid time. I also blame talk radio. that stuff is poison.

 

[andrewpmk]

This is probably a cynical view, but true to some extent, employers just want the cheapest office space, and do not care if employees needs cars to get to work, or if employees coming from other parts of the GTA get stuck in traffic on the way to work. There needs to be a provincial GTA-wide policy mandating that office space be built near high quality transit, e.g. build in a couple of designated areas in Brampton like Main/Queen where transit is good or don't build at all. People live and work all over the GTA, so an employer in Brampton is undoubtedly going to hire people from Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan, Burlington etc. If an employer is not served by good quality transit (lousy bus service does not count) then people have little or no choice but to drive and the sheer number of people with long car commutes between suburbs creates severe traffic congestion problems.

 

[unimaginative2]

The problem is that there is no comprehensive plan to transform the GO corridors into regional rail lines. As far as GO's concerned, it's just about steadily increasing frequency "as demand warrants." That's not regional rail. Actual regional rail will require a comprehensive plan to integrate fares, integrate connecting routes, electrify the lines, establish an exclusive double-track right of way, acquire rapid transit rolling stock, and establish a service standard for all day, every day that would be at least every 15 minutes regardless of whether such service is "needed." Right now, all we're seeing is piecemeal track improvements and "someday" frequency increases. This needs to be done in an integrated way all at once, one corridor at a time if necessary, and a new agency might be best suited to do it.

Once we have that kind of rapid transit service, we'll start to see developers build near the stations. Look at the explosive development we've seen along Sheppard and in North York Centre. The same can happen around regional rail stations, but not around GO stations with a train every hour.

So, again, you are saying places like Brampton should never have offices as there is no transit plan that will ever deliver that 5 minute frequency of train service. Some day, maybe, there might be 15 - 30 minute frequencies but 5? Never.....

Why? Lots of other cities have service like that.

 

[TOareaFan]

Why? Lots of other cities have service like that.

I said there is no plan.

 

[Electrify]

As I said earlier, the best thing we can do now is turn our office parks into mixed use communities. This can not only allow people to live closer to where they work, but with the mix of residential, employment, and commercial can allow these places to sustain regular transit service, rather than just lackluster rush hour service to and from.

 

[andrewpmk]

As I said earlier, the best thing we can do now is turn our office parks into mixed use communities. This can not only allow people to live closer to where they work, but with the mix of residential, employment, and commercial can allow these places to sustain regular transit service, rather than just lackluster rush hour service to and from.

The larger Mississauga office parks (Airport Corporate Centre, Highway 401/10, Meadowvale) will never have mixed use development because they are under the flight paths of Pearson Airport. People do not want to live there. This is the main problem with building office space here, it is cheap because land under airport flight paths is undesirable but there is little residential within walking distance and the nearby residential areas suffer lower property values because of this.

Markham probably has much more potential for mixed use development, since Buttonville airport is going to close soon. For this to be successful office space needs to be concentrated in Thornhill and Yonge/Highway 7 (at the proposed Yonge subway line) and near Unionville GO station (which could have frequent service in the future), so that people from Toronto can easily reverse commute, reducing traffic congestion on Highway 404. Also the YRT bus service needs to be improved, because it is poor right now and the traffic on Highway 7 is horrendous.

 

[TOareaFan]

The larger Mississauga office parks (Airport Corporate Centre, Highway 401/10, Meadowvale) will never have mixed use development because they are under the flight paths of Pearson Airport. People do not want to live there. This is the main problem with building office space here, it is cheap because land under airport flight paths is undesirable but there is little residential within walking distance and the nearby residential areas suffer lower property values because of this.

Markham probably has much more potential for mixed use development, since Buttonville airport is going to close soon. For this to be successful office space needs to be concentrated in Thornhill and Yonge/Highway 7 (at the proposed Yonge subway line) and near Unionville GO station (which could have frequent service in the future), so that people from Toronto can easily reverse commute, reducing traffic congestion on Highway 404. Also the YRT bus service needs to be improved, because it is poor right now and the traffic on Highway 7 is horrendous.

Should we not wait until the subway reaches highway 7 and until Unionville has all day service, bi-directional on 5 minute frequencies before allowing any offices be built there.

Airport office park has amongst the highest land values of any (non-core) office area in the GTA......yet businesses continue build or lease there......why? Because some companies (not just here but around the world) view locating near the airport as being a key driver for their business and will pay to do so....evening there is no subway or 5-minute GO train!

 

[unimaginative2]

I said there is no plan.

Well, no, you said "Never."

Should we not wait until the subway reaches highway 7 and until Unionville has all day service, bi-directional on 5 minute frequencies before allowing any offices be built there.

It's the developers that will wait, because they're going to build around highways unless there is real rapid transit for them to build around.

Airport office park has amongst the highest land values of any (non-core) office area in the GTA......yet businesses continue build or lease there......why? Because some companies (not just here but around the world) view locating near the airport as being a key driver for their business and will pay to do so....evening there is no subway or 5-minute GO train!

Yes, of course it's successful. That's not the point. The point is that it's auto-oriented. We won't have transit-oriented office parks until they have rapid transit to orient themselves to.

 

[andrewpmk]

Should we not wait until the subway reaches highway 7 and until Unionville has all day service, bi-directional on 5 minute frequencies before allowing any offices be built there.

Airport office park has amongst the highest land values of any (non-core) office area in the GTA......yet businesses continue build or lease there......why? Because some companies (not just here but around the world) view locating near the airport as being a key driver for their business and will pay to do so....evening there is no subway or 5-minute GO train!

Presumably these areas must be a lot cheaper than downtown though, that's why firms locate near the airport. The areas near Pearson Airport are ugly areas with planes flying above the airport and the traffic is often worse than downtown Toronto and the transit is a joke. Plus Meadowvale Business Park is a LONG way from downtown in heavy traffic, I figure that it must be cheaper to rent than Airport Corporate Centre (correct me if I am wrong).

Also once the airport rail link opens in 2015 this ought to diminish any advantage of being close to the airport and encourage firms to move downtown. For a non-aviation business, the only advantage of being near the airport that I can think of is ease of access for business travellers using the airport, and the airport rail link eliminates this advantage.

Also land values in 416 business parks like Consumers Rd have suffered due to high taxes (lower land values but higher taxes = businesses do not want to locate there). This probably explains why land values in 905 office parks are more expensive.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

andrewpmk:

The larger Mississauga office parks (Airport Corporate Centre, Highway 401/10, Meadowvale) will never have mixed use development because they are under the flight paths of Pearson Airport. People do not want to live there.

Not true in the case of Meadowvale - it's mainly beyond the NEF 25 contour, and there is a significant amount of new residential subdivisions between NEF 25 and NEF 30. More to do with how it's planned and zoned than noise in this case. In fact I think Mississauga and GTAA butted heads over rezoning some industrial lands into residential ones along Creditview - with the latter opposing due to potential noise issues. The area is all filled up with subdivisions now.

NEF Map: http://www.torontopearson.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=1016

AoD

 

[Hipster Duck]

Are there that many office jobs near the airport? Apart from that office park directly south of the 401 which will soon be reasonably well served by the Transitway, my impression is that most of the employment in the area is at companies with warehouses or manufacturing plants that need easy highway access and lots of cheap space.

This is anecdotal, but it seems that most of the white collar office parks are further west, in Meadowvale, or in Markham.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Apparently there is a significant amount - at least by the amount of office space - see. p 5.

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/ed/bgrd/backgroundfile-46067.pdf

There is also the (growing?) habit of putting front office and warehouse spaces within the same building in industrial lands as well.

AoD