Occupiers prioritise transport hubs as office demand remains high
April 11 2016
Yolo Comms spoke to senior executives at 200 of Scotland’s largest businesses and found that 83 per cent of professional services firms valued proximity to public transport above all else, closely followed by financial organisations (70 per cent) and IT (69 per cent).
Other priorities were having a good postcode with 94 per cent valuing the prestige of an upmarket area code and access to amenities, with three quarters placing value on having a choice of cafes and restaurants close to hand.
Cameron Stott of real estate services provider JLL noted: "We know that ease of travel is essential to businesses who not only count the cost of billable hours travelling between meetings, but also when factoring in the ease of commuting at the beginning and end of the day. With sustainability higher up on the business agenda, we also see a move towards the use of public transport, particularly in cities such as Edinburgh, which are highly congested.”
David Westwater, development director of tHe Haymarket added: “In the competitive professional services market having a highly visible office space can only have a positive impact on company profile.
“It is also very much about the company you keep, particularly amongst tech companies who see the value of collaboration - this is clearly easier to do if you are based either in the same building or a nearby space which allows for a cross fertilisation of ideas and best practices.”
Overall some 90 per cent of businesses polled said they were minded to expand over the next five years.
7 Comments
#1 Posted by basho on 11 Apr 2016 at 13:10 PM
Can someone please show this report to Edinburgh City Council - and hopefully persuade them to build the planned extensions to the tram network. Development in Leith and the BioQuarter in Moredun could be kick started if we just had some councillors with the backbone to green light tram expansion. Instead they cow tow to the noisy minority with a hysterical opposition to any plans for a modern public transport system.
#2 Posted by Islands of sanity on 11 Apr 2016 at 14:09 PM
Spot on basho. Just copy and paste your eloquent words to CEC.
#3 Posted by Paul Sweeney on 12 Apr 2016 at 10:50 AM
Hopefully it will also encourage proper investment in the integration of Glasgow's urban rail network.
We need to build strong cross-city services with 'turn-up and go' frequencies at peak times. There has been little consideration of how to better integrate the different lines to maximise utilisation of the network - despite the recent investment in the Subway.
A good example is the total lack of direct interchange between the Subway line at St. Enoch and the adjacent Argyle Line, as well at Buchanan Street and the North Clyde Line. I'd much rather be spending the money on that than plastering the stations with white bathroom tiles.
I was in Munich last week (a broadly similar sized city to Glasgow) and the seamless network interconnectivity, high frequency and 24 hour operation of their S Bahn (High Frequency Metro Rail) lines and U Bahn (Subway) lines puts us to shame! It's frustrating that the bulk of the infrastructure is already there in Glasgow (with redundant tunnels and route pathways to enable further expansion) - but it's just not used effectively.
We need to build strong cross-city services with 'turn-up and go' frequencies at peak times. There has been little consideration of how to better integrate the different lines to maximise utilisation of the network - despite the recent investment in the Subway.
A good example is the total lack of direct interchange between the Subway line at St. Enoch and the adjacent Argyle Line, as well at Buchanan Street and the North Clyde Line. I'd much rather be spending the money on that than plastering the stations with white bathroom tiles.
I was in Munich last week (a broadly similar sized city to Glasgow) and the seamless network interconnectivity, high frequency and 24 hour operation of their S Bahn (High Frequency Metro Rail) lines and U Bahn (Subway) lines puts us to shame! It's frustrating that the bulk of the infrastructure is already there in Glasgow (with redundant tunnels and route pathways to enable further expansion) - but it's just not used effectively.
#4 Posted by Stephen on 12 Apr 2016 at 13:59 PM
Glasgow and Edinburgh have a huge advantage over more or less every UK city outside London in terms of the high densities of urban housing, due primarily to an acceptance and prevalence of tenement (and later standard apartment) living over suburbia. Our respective councils and the Scottish government need to realise this opportunity and push their advantage home by investing heavily in an integrated public transport network like TfL has in London. The potential in Dennistoun and similar centres is obvious but as yet un-tapped, whilst both cities offer a quality of life (and countryside) completely un-obtainable in London. Progress is there for the taking...
#5 Posted by Metro man on 12 Apr 2016 at 22:01 PM
#4 actually it's the total opposite. Glasgow and Edinburgh do not have high densities to justify successful metro transport. I speak as someone who has worked around the world on these schemes. Glasgow is the dear green place...spacious and are now removing multi stories. Don't get me wrong I'd love to see better infrastructure but densities need to be doubled, even trebled to make the investment worthwhile.
#6 Posted by Stephen on 13 Apr 2016 at 17:23 PM
@ 5
I understand overall density for Glasgow to be 3,390/km2, compared to London at 5,200/km2, so I’d question your asserted need to double or triple the densities in order to justify investment in transport. Obviously those are general figures which include low density areas like Bearsden or Hampstead. Govanhill on the contrary is Scotland’s most densely populated area (even by the notoriously underestimated 2011 census data). Surely that could take an extension to the subway (thereby increasing the viability of the whole system)? Dennistoun similarly. Besides which, the point was rather that investment in infrastructure should come before we’re all tripping over ourselves and begging for better systems.
I understand overall density for Glasgow to be 3,390/km2, compared to London at 5,200/km2, so I’d question your asserted need to double or triple the densities in order to justify investment in transport. Obviously those are general figures which include low density areas like Bearsden or Hampstead. Govanhill on the contrary is Scotland’s most densely populated area (even by the notoriously underestimated 2011 census data). Surely that could take an extension to the subway (thereby increasing the viability of the whole system)? Dennistoun similarly. Besides which, the point was rather that investment in infrastructure should come before we’re all tripping over ourselves and begging for better systems.
#7 Posted by Terra on 13 Apr 2016 at 17:28 PM
#5 chicken or egg? I think it's clear that there is a need to expand both the Edinburgh tram system to Leith at the very least and to expand the Glasgow Metro (Subway) system. Especially considering that Leith is the most densely populated area of Edinburgh and that the areas of Glasgow most talked about with regards to Metro expansion are the East End and South Side, among a few others, both of which are in a process of, slow and much needed, regeneration; expansion of the Metro would pretty much guarantee the regeneration and development of those areas.
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