Average weekly - 74%
Peak Day - Wednesday 86%
Low Day - Friday 47%
The Index did not move significantly over the holiday season or into the early weeks of January. However, it has shown signs that employers are seeing more in-office work toward the end of January.
This Index features a summary of the 19th Forum conducted on January 24th, 2025, with over ninety partners and associates of SRRA discussing the post COVID Impact of Remote Work on Cities and Congestion.
A summary of the Forum is reprinted below.
The “Articles of Interest” feature returns in the next Index.
Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Your SRRA team
Beyond COVID: Lessons learned from the Occupancy Index and
The Root Causes of Congestion
Strategic Regional Research Alliance held its 19th Forum on 24 January 2025. Partners and guests attended in person and remotely by Zoom. Detailed copies of the Forum Summary are available to members and associates of SRRA. Reprinted below is a summary of the Forum.
Many of the challenges facing the region – housing availability and affordability, road congestion and sub-optimal transit use - existed before COVID and have been accelerated and made more pressing post COVID. A few new issues have arisen that will have a permanent impact.
The Forum concluded that COVID has entrenched some permanent remote work and triggered changes in travel choices and frequency that combine to increase road congestion and commute times.
While remote work is in the process of establishing a ‘new norm,’ there are many well researched evidence-based solutions to mitigating the negative impacts of congestion. What is needed now, is action to implement these solutions.
Here are the summary highlights from each Session.
Session One: The “New Norm” for remote work
The closing of the workplace brought on by COVID has impacted downtown retail businesses, accelerated on-line shopping, refocused transit use and forced employers to rethink the use and configuration of office space.
The return to the office has been steady. Claims during the height of the COVID lock-down about the end of office space have been replaced by a more nuanced application of remote work and an overhaul of many office premises. As of December, the Occupancy Index is at 73%.
At 85% it is reasonable to assume a ‘new norm’ has taken place.
At 85% there will not be a significant drop in demand for offices, retail dependent on office workers will have adjusted and transit operators will have reorganized around new peak hour travel times.
To complete the transition their needs be a heightened emphasis on creating accessible and affordable housing near transportation networks to reduce commute times and support population and employment growth with minimal impact of road use.
Session Two: The Root Causes of Congestion
High density urban regions worldwide have faced congestion on roads for centuries. The Greater Toronto Region is currently plagued by extreme road use and ever-increasing travel times.
Ancient Rome was congested. Nineteenth Century London and New York were congested as are the roads in today’s suburban Paris. Congestion is part of large urban region life, and 21st century cities are no exception to this rule. It is a sign of a City’s attractiveness and success. But the issue is how much is too much and what is the tipping point where congestion has net negative impacts?
The Fundamental Problem with Roads
Successful cities attract people, businesses and other activities, and the growth in population and economic activity will generally be faster than transportation infrastructure supply can keep up with.
Congestion is what engineers call a “non-linear phenomenon.” For quite some time, as traffic volumes increase, delays only increase marginally, as excess capacity is gradually used up. However, there is a “tipping point” beyond which delays increase exponentially and at a much faster rate than the population and associated traffic growth. Toronto passed that “tipping point” some time ago, and we are now very much experiencing the ramifications of rapid growth in time to travel anywhere and at more times of the week.
We can never build enough infrastructure to meet peak demands. This would be both economically and practically infeasible. Thus, successful cities will, inevitably, be congested. The challenge is to build transit alternatives to the road and plan for increased capacity to mitigate the worst consequences of growth. In the 1950s and 1960s the City of Toronto built for the 1980s but stopped adding to rapid transit in the 1970s. This meant subsequent was 100% reliant on roads. The recent investment in new subways and some bus routes has failed to fill this gap. As a result, Toronto will continue to fall behind as the region grows.
Immediate solutions to rising congestion lie in maximizing road capacity for essential services, and traditional modes of travel. But even more important is to maximize the capacity of the existing transit capacity. Action of both fronts needs to be a priority at all levels of government
Links to Articles of Interest
This feature will be continued in the next Index.
“The Occupancy Index is supported by the City of Toronto, Downtown Yonge BIA, and Downtown West BIA. It is a measure of the percentage of office employees returning to the office compared to the number of employees who would normally have come to their offices pre-COVID. For a detailed description of the calculation please contact Iain Dobson at [email protected],”