Airport area employers look for a better way
GTAA report makes the case for better transit to the GTA’s second-biggest jobs job.

thestar.com
Feb. 29, 2016
By Tess Kalinowski

Anjali Nath's job at the AeroCentre office complex south of Pearson International Airport comes with access to a private gym and two on-site restaurants.

But those amenities interest the 12-year employee less than the private shuttle that ferries her back and forth to the Kipling subway station each day.

Without it, Nath says, she and her husband would have to buy another car. They even moved into a condo directly across from the subway station so she can use the shuttle.

It's one of the private stopgap solutions to a growing public concern - how to connect the 300,000 people who work in and around the sprawling airport landscape. It's a growing topic of discussion among business leaders, land owners, politicians and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA).

The GTAA will release a report Monday that makes a powerful economic case for getting more of those commuters out of cars and onto transit, a problem that's been touched on in other studies by Metrolinx and the Neptis Foundation.

The latter identified the Pearson employment zone as the second largest in the country.

"That said, it lacks the higher order transit connectivity that other employment zones across the country would have," said GTAA vice-president Hillary Marshall.

The airport and employers ringing it are thriving but threatened by congestion on the surrounding roads, according to the GTAA consultant's report being released at the Toronto Region Board of Trade's Aviation Summit.

Among nine international flight hubs, Pearson was the only one with a single higher-order transit connection, the new, under-used Union Pearson Express train. All the others had at least two.

"Pearson is this absolutely critical nexus, not only in the transportation system but in the economic system," said Joe Berridge, of Urban Strategies Inc., who wrote the report, called Pearson Connects: A Multi-Modal Platform for Prosperity.

"Around the world, this pattern of having the second biggest employment zone in an urban area around the airport is absolutely characteristic. Most other cities have figured out how it is they're going to serve both that airport and the employment zone. We're really at the beginning of that," he said.

"There is a growing congestion noose around the airport. There's no date when that's fatal but it's an increasing level of impediment," he said.

About 40,000 people have jobs at Pearson, many of them lower-wage employees who work shifts. Only 8 per cent commute by transit, compared with about 40 per cent of workers at London Heathrow.

The GTAA wants to bring its transit use up to 25 to 30 per cent in the next 20 to 30 years.

"That is eminently achievable by the kinds of last-kilometre initiatives we're looking at," said Berridge, who notes that Pearson is growing at the same rate as Dubai's airport.

The GTAA wants to build a new multi-modal transit hub at the airport itself - a kind of Union Station West. New regional transit lines, including high-speed rail from Kitchener-Waterloo, and LRT along Eglinton and Finch Aves. need to be extended closer to Pearson, says the GTAA.

That would serve the blooming southwestern Ontario knowledge industries and provide valuable connections to training and jobs for those living in economically challenged neighbourhoods in Toronto and Mississauga.

"We're asking that we put the foot on the gas pedal a bit more strongly on the extensions of Eglinton, Finch, the Mississauga connections for the bus rapid transit moving out from Renforth, the possibility of the Derry Rd. connection," said Berridge.

"They've got to happen as quickly as they can. It takes 15 to 20 years to plan and build transit," he said.

The report also shows how new on-demand technologies are helping workers and travellers traverse the last mile to destinations around airports. In Atlanta and San Francisco, the airports are partnering with Uber. In Paris and Amsterdam there are buses circulating the doughnut ring of employers around the airport. That is supplemented by an on-demand system.

Around Pearson, "Those last-mile connections just don't exist in a functional manner," said Noah Gordon of Menkes Developments, which manages the AeroCentre complex and subsidizes the employee shuttle.

There are bus stops outside the AeroCentre, but the transit isn't practical for many workers.

"Outside of rush hour there's no service at all to some of those stops," said Gordon.

"There's no enclosures or anything. People don't want to sit out there in the wind, cold, sleet and snow."

For Menkes, the shuttle is a competitive tool for attracting tenants to the airport area rather than downtown or Mississauga's Meadowvale area.

"Companies want to be as close as possible to their employees, and if they can't be, they want to be in a location that is very easy to access however the employee chooses to get there," he said.

Marketing intern Madelaine Goetz, 21, takes the subway from Royal York to Kipling, where she boards the shuttle to her job at PepsiCo. She doesn't know how she would manage without it.

"I don't think I could, unless I took some sort of Mississauga bus, and I don't know how to do that," she said.

GLOBAL AIRPORTS WITH LOCAL LINKS

Other cities have figured out how to link their airports to the surrounding cities and regions. Toronto is just starting to make those connections.

Frankfurt Airport: Serving about 60 million air travellers annually, Frankfurt has a rapid transit and a rail connection directly in the terminal. About 33 per cent of airport visitors use transit.

Schiphol (Amsterdam): The sixth busiest train station in the Netherlands is located under the airport terminal. High-speed and commuter rail lines carried 36 per cent of the airport's passengers last year. Just outside is a bus terminal used by many airport workers. The airport city, which commands the highest office rents in the Netherlands, includes high-profile occupants such as Microsoft, Cargill and the European Union.

Manchester: In 2011, the British government created an enterprise zone designed to stimulate economic growth and jobs around the airport. Moving about 19 million passengers a year, its ground transport hub has bus, heavy and light rail connections.

Charles De Gaulle: About 40 per cent of people using the Paris airport arrive or depart on transit. Located 24 kilometres from downtown, Charles de Gaulle is served by the metro and the regional train system. An on-demand bus service called Fileo carries airport workers to public transit around the clock, along six lines to 16 towns.