Ottawa-Gatineau slow to see downtown traffic recover, but outlying areas see growth

A pedestrian crossing a deserted Metcalfe Street in downtown Ottawa during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Nicholas Stepchuck/CTV Viewer)

A new study on traffic patterns shows that the national capital region’s downtown cores remain largely bereft of their pre-pandemic volume.

It has been well documented that downtown Ottawa and downtown Gatineau have seen fewer workers in the office towers that employ large swaths of federal public servants after their jobs transitioned to remote work when the pandemic struck, but now, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has put figures to the local observations.

The study, leveraging cellphone location data gathered by Environics Analytics and cross-referenced with Statistics Canada data on employment, shows significant decreases in the number of workers commuting into the downtown core in September 2022 compared to January 2020, just before the pandemic began.

Ottawa has seen a 45.1 per cent drop in downtown traffic, while Gatineau saw a 74.7 per cent decrease, ranking it last among all downtowns across Canada included in the study. Ottawa was 49th out of 55 cities cited in the report.

Stephen Tapp, chief economist with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, tells Newstalk 580 CFRA’s “Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron” that the region’s major employers are well-suited to remote work.

“Generally, the distribution that we had before, in terms of industries, is more conducive to remote work. So, that’s part of what you’re seeing is people working remotely,” he said.

A graph depicting mobility traffic in Gatineau, Que. compared to the Canadian average. (Source: BDL calculations using Environics Analytics data./Canadian Chamber of Commerce)

OUTLYING COMMUNITIES SEE GROWTH

The decline is not universal, however; smaller towns and cities outside of Ottawa are seeing increased traffic, Tapp said.

“Places like Arnprior, Carleton Place, even Cornwall, places like that are actually busier than they were before the pandemic,” he said.

Downtown Kingston, for example, saw a 27.5 per cent increase in overall traffic, according to the study. Carleton Place was up about 7 per cent and Arnprior saw 21.7 per cent growth. Cornwall’s downtown was down 8.1 per cent, but that suggests it is still seeing a greater return to downtown traffic than Ottawa-Gatineau.

“I think what’s happened is you see all these knowledge workers, particularly those with kids, having a hard time finding housing. They’re moving to remote areas where they can work from home. They can commute into the big office headquarters once a week or every other week if they need to, but they’re looking for more space, they’re looking for more houses,” Tapp suggested.

A map showing changes in mobility between Jan. 2020 and Sept. 2022 in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. (Source: BDL calculations using Environics Analytics data./Canadian Chamber of Commerce)

DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION A PRIORITY FOR NEW MAYOR

Revitalizing downtown Ottawa was an issue for former mayor Jim Watson, who encouraged the federal government to bring workers back to their downtown offices. The shift to remote work has also put strain on OC Transpo’s fare revenues, as commuter buses to downtown see declines in ridership.

Public service unions, however, have been trying to keep work remote. Workers say it should not fall on their shoulders alone to support downtown businesses and OC Transpo.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, who was elected in October, has pledged to build more housing downtown and incentivize the conversion of unused offices to affordable housing to help revitalize the core.

Tapp says the data suggest the pre-pandemic business models of some businesses that were once prevalent downtown will need to change.

“You have restaurants, you have dry cleaners, you have other businesses that are serving downtown office workers, and if the downtown office workers are coming back a lot less than they were before, some of those businesses are going to struggle,” he said. “It’s a big adjustment process we’re going through right now.”

Conversely, those outside areas could see more growth.

“I don’t know if there are traffic jams in Arnprior, but there are certainly more people out there,” he said. “I think a lot of it is people looking for

space. If you’re working from home, you need an office, you need a place you can close the door and have some room, and there’s a lot more room in these outlying areas than there is in the downtown cores.”