Study: More Canadians using transit to make suburb to city commute

Commuters in Canada’s eight largest metropolitan areas are increasingly using public transit or active modes of transportation, such as biking or walking, to travel to work within cities and between the suburbs and cities.  

Using data from the 1996 and 2016 Censuses of Population, the study "Results from the 2016 Census: Commuting within Canada's largest cities," released May 29 in Insights on Canadian Society, examines the commuting patterns in Canada's eight largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs): Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa–Gatineau, Edmonton, Québec and Winnipeg. The study determined commuting patterns in those CMAs have shifted considerably during the past two decades.

Canada’s national statistical office, Statistics Canada, explained that these changes have occurred against a backdrop of changes in the country’s infrastructure system and alongside the rising number of jobs that have been created away from the city center of large metropolitan areas.

Statistics Canada noted that the study’s findings have potential implications for municipalities and local governments in the planning and design of transportation infrastructure in large metropolitan areas.

A highlight of the study’s findings includes:

• Most workers now work outside the city core
• The number of suburban commuters is on the rise in large CMAs
• Suburban commuters are less likely to use public transit

The study found that that an increasing number of people are working outside the city core, defined as areas located within 5 km (3.1 miles) of the city center, in the country’s large metropolitan areas. In 2016, the study found at least 70 percent of workers in Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver had a job located 5 km (3.1 miles) or more from the city center.

Additionally, the share of within city-core commuters (those who both live and work within 3.1 miles of the city center) declined in every CMA from 1996 to 2016 with Calgary seeing within city-core commuters dropping from 22 percent in 1996 to 9 percent in 2016.

For those commuters traveling suburb to suburb, a car was the dominate form of transportation and those same commuters did not embrace public transit or active modes of transportation even in large metropolitan areas that have more developed public transit and bicycling infrastructure.

“Conversely, public transit use increased among those who were traditional commuters (from a suburb to the city core). In Toronto, 67 percent of these commuters used public transit in 2016, up from 53 percent in 1996. Public transit use also increased among traditional commuters in other large CMAs over this period, from 38 percent to 55 percent in Montréal and from 30 percent to 45 percent in Vancouver,” explained Statistics Canada.

The study also determined a large increase in the proportion of within city-core commuters who used active modes for travel.

“In Toronto, 47 percent of within city-core commuters used an active mode of transportation in 2016, up from 19 percent in 1996. Montréal (from 16 percent to 38 percent), Vancouver (from 17 percent to 39 percent) Calgary (from 15 percent to 38 percent) and Ottawa–Gatineau (from 22 percent to 42 percent) also reported large increases. The proportions also increased in other CMAs, but by a smaller margin,” said Statistics Canada.