andrewpmk
Senior Member
So you are saying certain places (in this case Brampton ) should not have any offices or, for that matter, employment lands?
The GTA is way too spread out these days, that is the main problem, and it takes too long to get around the GTA because it is spread out and because the traffic is bad and the GO train service is poor. The fact that the traffic is worse going out of Toronto than in to Toronto strongly suggests that there is a shortage of jobs in Toronto for Toronto residents caused by excessively high commercial tax rates. I would say that if jobs are to be in the suburbs, it needs to be possible to commute from downtown Toronto in a reasonable amount of time, which means that there must be frequent reverse commute GO train service and that employers should whenever possible locate within walking distance of a subway or GO train line. If there were GO trains every 5 minutes both ways on the Georgetown GO train line and most of the office space in Brampton were at Queen & Main this would be much less of a problem and better GO train service would make long suburb to suburb commutes like Pickering to Brampton easier as well. Meadowvale Business Park claims to be 30 minutes from downtown but in rush hour this is laughable and it takes at least an hour. Obviously land intensive land uses like warehouses and factories may have to move to very distant suburbs to find land, but office buildings should never be located in outer suburbs that are poorly served by transit.