General Business Updates and News

[panamaniac]

Waterloo Region’s economy has ‘every reason for optimism,’ report says: https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...048a2.html

Who commissioned the report from the Conference Board of Canada? Based on their report "Where the Rubber Meets the Road: How Much Motorists Pay for Road Infrastructure", they seem to have a tendency to slant the report in a way the commissioning group will find favourable. In that particular report, for the CAA, they seem to do everything they can to minimise the how much of road maintenance costs are assigned cars and maximise how much revenue (fuel taxes, licensing fees) rather than trucks, in order to make cars seem economically palatable.

The report is part of an ongoing series of reports on major cities' economies.

[Bytor]

Who commissioned the report from the Conference Board of Canada? Based on their report "Where the Rubber Meets the Road: How Much Motorists Pay for Road Infrastructure", they seem to have a tendency to slant the report in a way the commissioning group will find favourable. In that particular report, for the CAA, they seem to do everything they can to minimise the how much of road maintenance costs are assigned cars and maximise how much revenue (fuel taxes, licensing fees) rather than trucks, in order to make cars seem economically palatable.

The report is part of an ongoing series of reports on major cities' economies.

But who commissioned it?

[panamaniac]

The report is part of an ongoing series of reports on major cities' economies.

But who commissioned it?

I saw no indication that anyone commissioned it.

[ac3r]

Downtown office vacancy rates hit 23.3%: https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...d81b7.html

[tomh009]

Downtown office vacancy rates hit 23.3%: https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...d81b7.html

It's no surprise at all. Between office space reductions and new office space available, it was bound to skyrocket.

The suburban office vacancy is under 10% so I expect we'll see some companies moving to downtown (it's obviously not a fit for all companies). There will also be some new tenants appearing, and maybe some more condo conversions, so the downtown vacancy rate will almost certainly start dropping again, but it definitely will not be sudden.

[ac3r]

Nonetheless, I wish they would try to actually strategize ways to promote growth of offices downtown. A downtown cannot thrive on condos and restaurants alone, which is more or less all ours is. That is unsustainable and will 100% inevitably fall apart in the future if there is no diversification.

The fact that suburban office rates are doing much better also highlights how narrow the focus downtown and uptown is and how dumb the people who work for us each day are.

Most people have (or will have) families and require space. They need larger homes, condos and apartments. If all we build downtown is primarily 1 and 2 bedroom condo units, that is also not sustainable. That is worsened by the fact that we built a total dog shit transit system that no matter how much money we waste fine tuning signalling or improving the headway by 30 or 60 seconds because it will quickly hit a peak where it ceases to become useful to commuters. Just look at how empty the park and ride lot at Fairview is...there's maybe 1 car there if you don't include the idling taxi cabs, security vehicle and the odd bus. I mean, would you use it? Really, would most people commit to wasting hours to days of their life just to drive a car, park it, then take a slow, dirty and unreliable train to work? Unless someone really has nothing going for them in life, probably not. They'll just drive to work. Nobody who lives in the suburbs is going to waste their time going downtown to work unless it's the last resort (or pays really well...very few companies downtown pay very well, though) on our transit system. That will only add to the challenges to evolve our core areas...unfortunately it's a bit too late to fix the LRT.

Ideally, the cities and region need to go all in on our future...but they aren't really doing that. They see the easy short term evolution and sure it seems great. We've got a LRT system and skyscrapers going up all over the place. We see tangible change, but it's so limited. The LRT is crap and these skyscrapers and towers can only really fit a couple and 1 child for a little while, until they move away. Unless we can diversify the cores of the cities, diversify the sort of housing we build and...well we can't do much about the LRT...then we're going to quickly reach a dead end in terms of evolution, at least for a good 50-60+ years when we build a subway and can do better than tissue box sized condos. But even then it will require a diversified economy to support. Downtown Kitchener was lucky that Google moved in, but they didn't really need to. Tech companies do quite well in suburbs or satellite towns. If all that is downtown are these small condos and restaurants then the next generation may complain about how short sighted we were beyond building stupid bike lanes, 1 bedroom condos and endless restaurants. They'll just continue to live out in the suburbs. The same way most of us have been doing since the 1960s.

[tomh009]

The fact that suburban office rates are doing much better also highlights how narrow the focus downtown and uptown is and how dumb the people who work for us each day are.

My theory with the difference in suburban vacancy rates is that the percentage of tech companies is far higher in the downtown area--and tech is where work-from-home is the most common. Suburban office space (though I don't know how exactly they divide the two) includes a lot more space that is associated with stores, warehouses or factories, and which is less likely to be vacated by WfH.

[the_conestoga_guy]

I wonder how office vacancy would look if it was taken as a function of the number of empty seats, instead of unrented spaces. My office is downtown, and with our hybrid WFH policy we probably only average 40-50% occupancy on a given day. I don't really think this metric is important, but it could predict some workplaces choosing to downsize in the future, which could impact the overall vacancy rate.

[tomh009]

I wonder how office vacancy would look if it was taken as a function of the number of empty seats, instead of unrented spaces. My office is downtown, and with our hybrid WFH policy we probably only average 40-50% occupancy on a given day. I don't really think this metric is important, but it could predict some workplaces choosing to downsize in the future, which could impact the overall vacancy rate.

Yes ... from what I have heard, Oracle has probably less than 10% occupancy, and that's after reducing their space by half. One thing is that if you don't have desks for everyone, you still need to build in buffer to allow more people than expected to come in, so 50% might actually be reasonable. And the other question is what the company's future policy or strategy is for remote/office work; this will vary by company.

Our team is hybrid, but we are all on the same schedule, in the office Tue/Wed/Thu. On Mondays and Fridays, there are only a few people in the office, but on the other three days we are close to 100% desk occupancy. I personally feel this works much better than having everyone on a random hybrid schedule, but that's just me.

[Acitta]

Nonetheless, I wish they would try to actually strategize ways to promote growth of offices downtown. A downtown cannot thrive on condos and restaurants alone, which is more or less all ours is. That is unsustainable and will 100% inevitably fall apart in the future if there is no diversification.

The fact that suburban office rates are doing much better also highlights how narrow the focus downtown and uptown is and how dumb the people who work for us each day are.

Most people have (or will have) families and require space. They need larger homes, condos and apartments. If all we build downtown is primarily 1 and 2 bedroom condo units, that is also not sustainable. That is worsened by the fact that we built a total dog shit transit system that no matter how much money we waste fine tuning signalling or improving the headway by 30 or 60 seconds because it will quickly hit a peak where it ceases to become useful to commuters. Just look at how empty the park and ride lot at Fairview is...there's maybe 1 car there if you don't include the idling taxi cabs, security vehicle and the odd bus. I mean, would you use it? Really, would most people commit to wasting hours to days of their life just to drive a car, park it, then take a slow, dirty and unreliable train to work? Unless someone really has nothing going for them in life, probably not. They'll just drive to work. Nobody who lives in the suburbs is going to waste their time going downtown to work unless it's the last resort (or pays really well...very few companies downtown pay very well, though) on our transit system. That will only add to the challenges to evolve our core areas...unfortunately it's a bit too late to fix the LRT.

Ideally, the cities and region need to go all in on our future...but they aren't really doing that. They see the easy short term evolution and sure it seems great. We've got a LRT system and skyscrapers going up all over the place. We see tangible change, but it's so limited. The LRT is crap and these skyscrapers and towers can only really fit a couple and 1 child for a little while, until they move away. Unless we can diversify the cores of the cities, diversify the sort of housing we build and...well we can't do much about the LRT...then we're going to quickly reach a dead end in terms of evolution, at least for a good 50-60+ years when we build a subway and can do better than tissue box sized condos. But even then it will require a diversified economy to support. Downtown Kitchener was lucky that Google moved in, but they didn't really need to. Tech companies do quite well in suburbs or satellite towns. If all that is downtown are these small condos and restaurants then the next generation may complain about how short sighted we were beyond building stupid bike lanes, 1 bedroom condos and endless restaurants. They'll just continue to live out in the suburbs. The same way most of us have been doing since the 1960s.

I don't know what transit system you are referring to. The ION is certainly not dirty. That you call it that shows that you do not ride it. It may be not as fast as we like, but it is certainly not unreliable, barring idiot motor vehicle drivers who crash into it and the occasional ice storm. I doubt that the many people who use it every day would characterize it the way you do. The bus network is very good. I have stops for three routes within a block of my apartment, and a fourth an extra 5 minutes walk away. While I prefer to ride my bike most of the time, I use GRT regularly and have never had any problems with it.

[ijmorlan]

I don't know what transit system you are referring to. The ION is certainly not dirty. That you call it that shows that you do not ride it. It may be not as fast as we like, but it is certainly not unreliable, barring idiot motor vehicle drivers who crash into it and the occasional ice storm. I doubt that the many people who use it every day would characterize it the way you do. The bus network is very good. I have stops for three routes within a block of my apartment, and a fourth an extra 5 minutes walk away. While I prefer to ride my bike most of the time, I use GRT regularly and have never had any problems with it.

Of “slow, dirty and unreliable”, Ion is 1 (slow). It should be much faster, and better reliability wouldn’t be a bad thing but I don’t think it qualifies as “unreliable”.

Mentioning a subway is just silly. In our context it’s the kind of thing that anti-transit people bring up to avoid progress being made on reasonable transit projects. Given construction costs, likely ridership, and the overall layout of the city, it would make way more sense to build multiple LRT lines. When the Toronto subway first opened, it replaced a streetcar line that had something like a streetcar every minute, with every one packed to the rafters, and much of the initial line was actually surface running (and some of it still is, although some of the original surface running area has been built over).

[ac3r]

I don't know what transit system you are referring to. The ION is certainly not dirty. That you call it that shows that you do not ride it. It may be not as fast as we like, but it is certainly not unreliable, barring idiot motor vehicle drivers who crash into it and the occasional ice storm. I doubt that the many people who use it every day would characterize it the way you do. The bus network is very good. I have stops for three routes within a block of my apartment, and a fourth an extra 5 minutes walk away. While I prefer to ride my bike most of the time, I use GRT regularly and have never had any problems with it.

This is copium.

If our transit system was actually fast, reliable and clean then more people would actually use it. But the majority don't because by and large it's awful. It's a last resort for most people and it's delusional to try and argue otherwise.

Mentioning a subway is just silly. In our context it’s the kind of thing that anti-transit people bring up to avoid progress being made on reasonable transit projects.

It's not silly and it will become necessary. But keep in mind, I'm talking about the far future here when the Region of Waterloo has, say, 2 or 2.5+ million people living here. At that point, street running LRT systems like ours are not going to be sufficient for the needs of the people who live here. They can only do so much and at some point the region is at the very least going to require underground, trenched or elevated LRT lines so that it can operate more as a light metro the way it does in Calgary, Ottawa or Edmonton.

[neonjoe]

I don't know what transit system you are referring to. The ION is certainly not dirty. That you call it that shows that you do not ride it. It may be not as fast as we like, but it is certainly not unreliable, barring idiot motor vehicle drivers who crash into it and the occasional ice storm. I doubt that the many people who use it every day would characterize it the way you do. The bus network is very good. I have stops for three routes within a block of my apartment, and a fourth an extra 5 minutes walk away. While I prefer to ride my bike most of the time, I use GRT regularly and have never had any problems with it.

This is copium.

If our transit system was actually fast, reliable and clean then more people would actually use it. But the majority don't because by and large it's awful. It's a last resort for most people and it's delusional to try and argue otherwise.

Mentioning a subway is just silly. In our context it’s the kind of thing that anti-transit people bring up to avoid progress being made on reasonable transit projects.

It's not silly and it will become necessary. But keep in mind, I'm talking about the far future here when the Region of Waterloo has, say, 2 or 2.5+ million people living here. At that point, street running LRT systems like ours are not going to be sufficient for the needs of the people who live here. They can only do so much and at some point the region is at the very least going to require underground, trenched or elevated LRT lines so that it can operate more as a light metro the way it does in Calgary, Ottawa or Edmonton.

https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/performa...sures.aspx
Ridership has been increasing, the busses and LRT are packed on most days. The limiting factor right now isn’t cleanliness but speed as well as our built urban form. For a small-mid size system specifically in a region with multiple disconnected cores our transit system fairs very well based on North american standards. It could be better, but it’s definitely not terrible.

[taylortbb]

If our transit system was actually fast, reliable and clean then more people would actually use it. But the majority don't because by and large it's awful. It's a last resort for most people and it's delusional to try and argue otherwise.

Everyone here agreed with you it wasn't fast. You're right, if it was fast, reliable, and clean then people would use it. But the fact it doesn't have more ridership doesn't prove that all three of those are false, just that one of them is (or that the premise is wrong, but I agree with the premise). The falsity of "A and B and C" does not imply that all of A, B, and C are false.

GRT is clean (a lot cleaner that the TTC, MTA, etc, which undeniably have high ridership). Reliability is pretty good (could be better, but again, it's not any worse than the TTC, MTA, etc). But compared to driving it's undeniably slow.

I'd also like to point out that you're moving the goal posts. Your original post was about ION, and as soon as people disputed your claims you changed it to "our transit system". You call people here delusional, but then engage in logical fallacies and goal post moving. You started with a fair point, that ION ridership isn't what it could be, and that we should be working to boost it, but then undermined the whole conversation.

[ac3r]

I'd also like to point out that you're moving the goal posts. Your original post was about ION, and as soon as people disputed your claims you changed it to "our transit system".

I think you need to reread the chain of conversation and try again.