Okay. What a strange elitist approach.
There is nothing 'elitist' in what I said, or how I said it.
The premise you put forward was very extreme to the point of being provably untrue with little effort.
If you had said something more moderate, there may have been a useful conversation to be had.
"Downtown is Dead" Is not true today; what is true is that worker count and foot fall are down materially.
If you went down to the Eaton Centre over the holidays, it was packed. If you attended a Leafs game, same deal; if you visited one of the downtown supermarkets, you would have seen long lines and high traffic, to the point where more supermarkets are now being built with 3 due to open in the next 18 months.
Anyways. We know downtown foot traffic is down 46%
This part, we arguably know.
. We know wfh is here to stay with max around three days a week in office and we know TTC ridership still hasn’t recovered.
These are things we know.
This part we most certainly do not know. Your conclusion is premature.
The TTC is at 69% of pre-pandemic ridership as at the first week of December.
From:
https://ttc-cdn.azureedge.net/-/med...8055352&hash=D3DF6A6AF744C6117123DF471C801AA8
While still low, its hardly apocalyptic.
Its worth adding that very poor GO Service levels and lesser TTC service levels are contributing factors; which one would hope will be fully resolved by the close of 2023.
Downtown Toronto will add over 10,000 residents this coming year.
It will almost certainly add employment as well.
The notion of 'repurposing' the TTC is utterly bizarre in that context.
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We don't have exact data in yet, but I'm told Retail footfall/sales in downtown is also higher since that report you quoted which used Sept' 22 data; if you extracted the PATH-based numbers, it actually looks pretty good, as the PATH is far more effected than is main-street retail.
That's not to suggest there aren't headwinds. Indeed, there are.
There certainly seems to be a probable shift to greater off-peak transit service vs peak.
I do expect WFH will have some lasting structural effect, though less than many seem to think. But I anticipate this will be almost entirely offset by employment growth.
