[URBAN NOTE] "Business is booming at Pearson, but transit is not"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Vanessa Lu reports on how Pearson and its neighbourhoods are badly served by mass transit routes.

People naturally think of downtown Toronto or even North York city centre when they think about where the jobs are.

But a report from the Neptis Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan research group, released Thursday, shows that one of the fastest growing employment zones is the area surrounding Pearson airport – which geographically is six times bigger than the downtown core.

Jobs include those who are directly employed at the airport to affiliated jobs in warehousing and transportation, as well as manufacturing and construction.

Surprisingly, there are more than 60,000 jobs just in finance and business services in the area. Some of the big employers include Pratt & Whitney, Hewlett Packard, Bell, Rogers and BlackBerry.

Known as the airport megazone, with an estimated 297,990 jobs in 2011, up 22,550 from 2001, it is second only to Toronto’s downtown zone with 464,650 jobs in 2011.

But unlike downtown, due to its location, most people drive their own vehicles to get to work.