Publications
Occupancy Index
Updated October 15 2020
The downtown office employment cluster has been hollowed out by COVID 19. Knowing how many have returned and when will help the economic ecosystem recover, tenants to plan better and transit agencies to provide important service amendments to support the commute. The Occupancy Index by SRRA includes data submitted from three sources: tenant interviews, landlord interviews and direct data input from building managers.
Benchmarking the Return to Work - Office Employment Downtown Toronto - Worldwide review of Best Practices
September 2020 including a bi-weekly update October 5th
Toronto, London, New York and several other cities are heavily dependent on transit to re-open the core employment sectors post lockdown. Suburban office employment, dependent largely on the private vehicle have seen significant return to work. This paper has a deep look into comparable cities whose financial services sectors are reliant on transit but continue to struggle.
Re-Opening Financial District at Risk If Transit Service Reduced
Revised May 28th 2020
Discussions are now underway to facilitate the re-opening of the economy, but re-opening Toronto’s Financial District, which is central to the health of both Ontario’s and Canada’s economy, poses unique problems for decision makers because of its heavy reliance on public transit.
Quick Relief – a post-COVID opportunity to create more personal space on transit
April 2020
The impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented, but no one yet really knows or understands if, when, or how city life will return to something approaching normality. If the pandemic achieves nothing else, it will have given those Torontonians who had to step outside a unique glimpse into life without congestion. Quick Relief will provide an immediate opportunity to reduce the crushing congestion on Line 1 and 2 within months…
Future of Office Space post COVID 19
March 2020
The challenge of imagining the future of cities in a post-pandemic world has been taken up by a wide range of opinion leaders, policy makers and urban practitioners, ranging from urban planners and architects to real estate professionals, economists, and institutional lenders…
Business Case Analysis in Infrastructure
September 2018
Strategic Regional Research Alliance (SRRA) and its founders have conducted over 20 Business Case Analyses (BCA). Terms also commonly used for such inquiries include; Cost Benefit Analysis, Business Cases, Pro Formas, and Value Plans. SRRA has employed the BCA process and applied its principles in developing arguments for educational facilities, employment clustering, real estate development and transit…
Quick Relief
June 2018
The single most pressing problem facing commuters travelling to jobs in the core is overcrowding at the St George and Yonge/Bloor interchange stations and the two legs of Line 1 south of Bloor. The Downtown Relief Line proposal (DRL) is seen by many as the only solution to this problem. While funding for preliminary study has been approved there is no current funding committed for a 12 to 15year project estimated to cost in excess of $14 billion…
Public Confidence in Transit
May 2018
Transit is more than the familiar debates about busses, LRTs, subways and rail. A well-designed network of transit acts as the Region’s spine to help realize more than just moving people. Transit can support place making, intensification, realize environmental goals and enable economic growth by connecting affordable places to live and work. Regional transit shrinks geography while expanding the urban footprint of a growing city-region. This multi-faceted nature adds to the complexity of transit planning and serves to underscore the importance of getting it all right.
Analysis of Transit Funding in the GTHA
December 2017
SRRA introduced the concept of private sector funding of transit to create more transit than is currently funded solely by the public sector. Part One identified revenue opportunities through efficiencies in regional service levels and fare rationalization. Part Two is to recommend and prioritize new projects and Part Three is to propose governance changes to attract non-government funding of Transit – SRRA.
Report Available Upon Request
The Impact of Transit on Regional Growth
May 2016
Strategic Regional Research Alliance (SRRA) with its partners, the Cities of Toronto, Markham and Mississauga, and York Region (the project team) studied the effect of Regional Express Rail (RER), the SmartTrack plan proposed during the 2014 Mayoralty Campaign by then candidate John Tory, and other transit projects on projected growth in the region.
Commercial & Multi-Residential Forecasts for Ridership Analysis
January 2016
SRRA assembled growth data from the province and 9 municipalities and prepared projections throughout the region in micro detail. The conclusion was that unless significant land use, taxation and transit policy were left untouched the Regions economic prosperity was at risk.
The project included testing development scenarios with the development industry to evaluate the probability of development occurring at new transit stations. This study assumed no planning policy changes which led to the conclusion that significant planning policy innovation was required to achieve optimum operating performance of the new transit.
The team developed projections of growth in partnership with all municipalities and provided that data to the University of Toronto’s Transportation Research Institute ridership analysis.
Report to be posted soon.
The Nodal Study: The Future of Office Development in the GTHA
March 2015
This study is a high level assessment of places in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) where the next wave of office growth is likely to occur. Interviews with major employers indicate that no node "has it all", congestion is stifling business growth and access the affordable labour is being challenged by the lack of public transit to many of acceptable nodes/clusters of employment.
A Region in Transition
August 2013
The Region has shifted from employment centered in downtown Toronto to a regional model where over 500,000 jobs are in centers outside the core. This transition has occurred in less than 40 years and now presents new challenges to transit and city building experts.
This study shows the benefits of collaboration between land use policy, transit planning and economic development: a better environment in which to live, work and play.
The Business Case for the Regional Relief Line
May 2010, revised October 2013
The "Regional Relief Line" (RRL) connects the majority of the Region's office employment clusters, offering employers and employees an unprecedented degree of mobility choice, considerable reduction in commute time, significant congestion relief in the 905 and the downtown core.
The New Geography of Office Location
This 2011 study demonstrates that the location of major office employment has shifted in a very short time frame from downtown Toronto to non-transit locations.
Mississauga Office Strategy Study
Completed in 2008, this study for Mississauga office development has led directly to new planning policies and a highly valuable transit alignment now planned for Hurontario Street.