Business Parks Suck (but they don't have to)

i've spent a lot of my life in business parks i used to work in tech before it was cool and back then tech companies weren't exactly set up in shiny offices downtown they were in the cheapest office space available and that usually meant working in some crappy business park by the airport my job's required a lot of business travel as well so i've been to a lot of crappy business parks all over the us and canada so the other day when i needed to go to an appointment in a business park by the airport i knew what to expect at least i thought i did i'm not gonna share which company i was visiting with you internet weirdos that's none of your damn business but let's pretend it was this fedex building this was not like the business parks i was used to the most unusual thing for me was that it was actually trivially easy for me to get there by public transportation i rode my bike to the nearest station parked in the underground parking garage and walked to the train platforms i could have waited for a direct train to my destination but trains come so often here that it was just faster to take the first train going to the airport i didn't even need to wait two minutes then at schepel airport i transferred to another train and again i didn't even need to wait two minutes after that it was a short pleasant walk to the office building as somebody taking public transit this is a drastically different experience than any north american business park i've ever been to and that's an understatement let me explain a long time ago in a suburb far far away i used to work in this building in a crappy business park by the toronto airport it kind of sucked the job and the location i stole this mug from them before i left because it had the perfect corporate bs mission statement it says continuously improving customer satisfaction i bet the management committee worked really really hard to come up with that one the office was here and i was living in a shared house with some roommates on the other side of the airport here about 10 kilometers away as the crow flies which would have been fine except that i was a poor student so i had to take the bus and it was just so bad i had two choices for my commute the first was two buses which were scheduled to come every 20 minutes in rush hour but these were suburban buses that would constantly get stuck in traffic so the schedule was absolutely meaningless i could easily end up standing in the cold by this bus stop for over half an hour waiting for my transfer and i had to cross two legs of this nasty suburban intersection between bus stops too going this way my typical commute door to door was anywhere from about 50 minutes to over an hour depending on the transfer and traffic of course if i had a car the trip probably would have taken me around half an hour in traffic so the whole commute could have been shorter sometimes than just waiting for that bus connection so i opted for a second option which was only one bus but this was the actual route it took two loops through the airport and out the other side going this way took me about an hour and 10 minutes door to door but at least i didn't have to stand out in the cold waiting for a transfer when i got to my destination the bus dropped me off here at the side of this six lane strode it's an absolutely miserable place to be outside of a car i would then walk down the sidewalk next to the high-speed motor traffic then i'd cross through the grass here and go in through the back door there were constant problems and delays with my commute but if i ever complained about it at work the people there would usually just tell me i should grow up and buy a car i resisted telling them they didn't pay me enough to afford a car in the first place at the time i didn't think much of this i was a student and i didn't have much money so i had to take the bus along with all the other desperate people who couldn't afford a car and i was born and raised in a car infested city so being surrounded by a constant stream of motor vehicles and wide suburban strodes didn't really seem out of the ordinary [Applause] but when i think back on it knowing what i know today it was disgraceful it's absolutely disgusting how public transit users are treated in north america and to be clear this is in the suburbs of toronto which by north american standards have good public transportation a lot of places in the u.s are much much worse than this at least here i had a sidewalk but i can't even express how different that experience was to this place in the netherlands which is also a business park by the airport this place in mississauga is designed for cars and everything else is an afterthought at best you are simply not welcome here if you're not driving but this is a place designed for people a place that is comfortable and inviting to be in it allows people to drive here too but it's clearly not the only way to get here or even the preferred way to get here and that makes a huge difference after my meeting i spent over an hour and a half wandering around this place and it seemed every time i turned a corner there was something else that amazed me and that's kind of crazy considering you know it's a business park by the airport in north america i was always a second-class citizen as a transit rider transit was an afterthought overlaid on top of the extensive car infrastructure but here transit is prioritized as a first-class mode of transportation this business park is a very easy walk from a train station with frequent service and you're not stuck on a narrow sidewalk along a high speed strode these buses aren't stuck in traffic behind a bunch of cars on a suburban arterial road they have their own completely separate road of their own and it's raised up above the road for cars here so that it doesn't even need to stop at any traffic lights this lets buses run regularly and reliably and buses were arriving every few minutes as i was filming and keep in mind this was on a tuesday early in the afternoon not at rush hour the bus stop itself is spacious and comfortable with stairs and an elevator down to ground level this is what first class transit infrastructure looks like in this business park transit is prioritized this place is built around public transit not just for cars the designers of this place want people to arrive here by transit and they make it comfortable and convenient to do so this traffic light was great too first it goes green for this bus most dutch intersections have priority for public transit if a public transit vehicle arrives it always gets to go through and everybody else has to wait which makes sense because there are usually several dozen people on a transit vehicle after a moment the next priority is given to people walking and cycling because the system detected pedestrians here the traffic light turned green to let them cross while keeping the light red for all drivers to avoid any conflict between cars and people walking then the light turns green for these cars so that they can enter the roundabout as the last car passes the stop line the light turns red to allow other traffic to pass but then the traffic control system detects another car approaching so it turns green again and early enough that the approaching car doesn't need to stop then immediately after the car passes it turns red again this is a great example of how dutch intersections allow short wait times or even no wait times for drivers while also prioritizing cycling and public transit it really is better for everyone and over here at this part of the junction the light is always green for pedestrians unless a car or transit vehicle is detected so when i cross here i don't need to press any buttons i don't need to wait and i don't need to cross six lanes of car traffic either i just keep walking safely and conveniently to the train station nearby the other thing that amazed me is just how nice this place is which makes it really enjoyable to walk which is why there were more people out here walking even on this miserable rainy day than you'd ever see in a business park in canada even in good weather canada does an okay job of making it theoretically possible to walk as they are usually sidewalks but it's definitely not enjoyable to walk and most people will avoid walking in suburbia unless they're forced to notice here that every office is located next to the sidewalk not across a sea of parking and the pedestrian entrances are wide and comfortable it's more pleasant to approach this building as a pedestrian than a driver okay so the garden is probably nicer in summer but you get the idea the weather sucks here but everything else is pretty great and look at how easy it is to cross the road here this is not a strode like you'd find in north america it's split into two sections of two narrow lanes in each direction with a grassy median in between this means that as a pedestrian i only need to look in one direction at a time to find a gap in traffic there's no traffic light required no expensive infrastructure i just wait until it's safe to cross i can't do this across a six lane strode then there's a nice pedestrian bridge and a bicycle path that i need to cross and then i get immediate access to the building without needing to go through any parking lots cars are still welcome here this is actually pretty car centric by dutch standards i mean there's more than one lane for cars in each direction which is pretty rare to see here but the parking is all underground tucked under the buildings and it isn't an inconvenience or a safety hazard to pedestrians the buildings here actually have interesting architecture too they're not all a bunch of single-story concrete rectangles there are loading bays for the businesses here as you'd expect in a business park but right next to it is the entrance to a parking garage for bicycles i also appreciate how the water management infrastructure takes the form of attractive canals rather than an ugly storm water pond next to a freeway in general it's just really nice here people spend a lot of time where they work and it's important that those places are nice for our own sanity let's face it this place is ugly really ugly nobody wants to be here getting here is a necessary evil that people put up with it's bad enough sitting in a tiny cubicle staring at a computer screen filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drawn on about mission statements without also being surrounded by soul-crushing asphalt and concrete every time you step outside nobody gets any joy from being here even the people in cars nothing about this place is good and here it is over 20 years later and this place still sucks which is why i was able to get this video of it to be fair the buses are more frequent than they were in my day but they're still stuck in traffic and still take the same circuitous routes and now they've even put up a fence around the building i used to work in so walking from the bus stop is even worse today than it was when i worked there i actually got angry coming to this business park thinking about all those years of my life wasted away on those crappy buses stuck in traffic the long cold walks down the side of an awful suburban six lane strode getting cut off by drivers when crossing the road and constantly feeling like a second class citizen and i didn't even talk about the amazing bicycle infrastructure that is literally everywhere around this area or the park and ride garage that makes it easy for people in the suburbs to come into the city without driving and i don't mean to imply that every business park in the netherlands is always going to be this good but even remote industrial parks have high quality cycling infrastructure i just i i don't know how to express this feeling to people who have never experienced both places europeans are going to look at this and think okay so you took a train to a business park big deal and north americans are going to look at this and think there's a sidewalk and a bus shelter what are you complaining about or more likely oh just shut up and get a car but it's not any one of these elements it's all of these things together it's the high quality public transportation that's clean and well maintained and so frequent that you don't even need to look at a schedule it's the airport that's not just another destination but a major transportation hub with trains leaving every few minutes it's it's the single payment card that can be used on all transportation systems in the entire country it's the respect that's given to transit users and the enjoyable experience for pedestrians it's sidewalks with other people on them not just me next to a constant flow of cars it's the options that are provided for walking cycling in public transit it's the freedom to not to have to drive and you know what it's when the people you're meeting ask how you got there and they don't look down on you for taking public transportation in fact they're relieved because then they didn't have to sort out visitor parking it's the respect the consideration being treated every bit as good as everybody else regardless of the way you got to the office and that is something that just doesn't exist in most of north america and let's face it large parts of the us and canada suck their non-places dysfunctional insolvent and ugly if all of the jobs moved out of here and this place disappeared tomorrow nobody would even care but it doesn't have to be this way i've seen the alternatives cities built for people not just for cars if we design our cities differently it is possible to make places that don't suck places where you'd actually want to be and yeah even a business park by the airport i'd like to thank my supporters on patreon who paid me to get irrationally angry no rationally angry about business parks if you'd like to support the channel and allow me to wander around with a camera in other ridiculous places visit patreon.com not just bikes you

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 1,318,032

Keywords: netherlands, urban planning, business parks, urban design, mississauga, transit equality, the office, mississauga ontario

Id: SDXB0CY2tSQ

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Battleharden]

How are those traffic lights not the standard everywhere?

[u/aan8993uun]

Going to England and living there for 6 months, and then moving back to Alberta made me feel like I had gone back in time by 40 years.

[u/eggsistoast]

Mississauga is really in the sweet spot of being horrible to drive in, horrible to take the bus in, horrible to bike in, and horrible to walk in.

[u/barknobite]

I live in a bigger German city, where public transport and cycling infrastructure are considered really good. And yet, every time I visit the Netherlands, I am always amazed just how much better and thought through their cities are. You simply use the infrastructure as the most convenient and safe way to navigate the city. To North American folks it must feel like arriving at a different planet, I guess.

Edit: judging by the comments, I feel the need to clarify what I meant: The infrastructure for public transportation, cycling and pedestrians in the Netherlands is way way better, safer and more convenient than what I'm used to in Germany, where the standards are already quite high to begin with.

[u/BCouto]

Everything about this is very true. Public transit/pedestrians are an afterthought when we develop cities.

I live 23km from my workplace. It takes me 20mins by car to get there. It would take me 3 hours via public transit.

[u/Reso]

As a Canadian, Not Just Bikes has really woken me up to the fact that we are not better than the US in terms of city planning. In many ways we are equally bad or worse.

The current plan for southern Ontario is to turn it into a single-family-dwelling sprawl worse than Arizona. Suburbs from Kingston to Windsor, all the way south to lake Erie and north to Georgian bay. That is the plan they are executing.

If we want any hope of having lively neighborhoods, walkable cities, or preserving the greenbelt, we have to fight to change the plan.

[u/splinterededge]

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, I was just talking with my wife about how modern design and architecture will never be the same. It's like we all forgot about to make nice things, In Pittsburgh, the only nice architecture we still have around was made forever ago.

[u/Left-Importance-3412]

100% to everything you said. I was a bus-bike commuter in Florida and for a short time in the Netherlands. 100% agree. It was so bad in the US that it just feels malicious.

[u/gnuban]

The thing about the Netherlands that is often overlooked in videos like this is that they also have one of the best highway networks I've seen, including 12-lane highways, dynamic speed limits and realtime info boards for congestion control, really good routing around major hubs etc. They've really nailed transport on all fronts, and especially how to transition from rural to urban.