something needs to be done for the north shore, it is getting really bad and can only get worse.
40% of North Vancouver businesses considering leaving: Survey
Brent Richter / North Shore News
JANUARY 18, 2018 04:00 PM
North Vancouver’s business community is warning our daily transportation problems aren’t just a nuisance that make us late for dinner – they’re an existential threat to the local economy.
The North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce released a survey of 153 of its member businesses Wednesday, raising red flags from an employer’s point of view.
More than three-quarters of respondents said they have employees who commute to the North Shore for work. But the same percentage said it is getting harder to retain staff because they are getting fed up with the drive or transit ride in.
“How can we ask people to work for our company when it takes them two hours to commute here?” one of the respondents wrote.
Replacing them is even worse, with 84 per cent who reported transportation is a factor in difficulty hiring new employees.
“We used to be able to attract from Vancouver and Burnaby, but no longer. Nobody wants to deal with the bridges,” another wrote.
Goods movement is also an issue for 54 per cent of respondents. One business owner said couriers have come to refer to North Van as the “seventh circle of hell.”
Although 77 per cent of business owners said it was either unlikely or very unlikely that they’d consider closing because of transportation challenges, 40 per cent said they would consider relocating outside of North Vancouver.
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http://www.nsnews.com/news/40-of-nor...vey-1.23148874