Skip to content

Spacing

Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Bikes

Commuting snapshots across the Spacing map

By

Read more articles by

Source: Statistics Canada

By Emily Richardson — cross-posted from Spacing Atlantic

Despite dramatic differences in population, density, infrastructure, and growth, there is remarkable consistency between commuting patterns in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Halifax, particularly when it comes to travelling by car. And incidentally, when it comes to getting us out of them, we seem to find buses and bike lanes unconvincing. A closer look at our most recent census data raises some surprising – and some predictable – findings about the way we get to work and how preferences change as our cities grow.

First a few words on sources and statistics: All data in this article, with the exception of bike lane information, is based on the 2006 census of Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal‘s census metropolitan areas with trends from the 2001 census. I will be the first to concede two important shortcomings in the data. First, neither the number of cities nor the number of data points within each city is sufficient for any analysis to be statistically significant (in other words, proper analysis requires more, and more robust, data to hold up to scrutiny). Second, the data is a static snapshot in time, and it lacks any context that might explain why the upcoming 2011 census might paint a vastly different picture.

But despite these drawbacks, the census data does highlight some consistencies between cities and concerns about the economic, social, and environmental implications of our commuting habits. It remains to be seen whether erratic fuel prices, transit-pass tax incentives, and growing bike-lane networks over the past four years will meaningfully influence our commuting habits by 2011. In the meantime, comments and observations are welcomed in response to this anecdotal food for thought.

With this disclaimer out of the way, there are numerous ways of charting commuting data in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa; this discussion will highlight three. Foremost, although data can be spun, twisted, and manipulated to support nearly every position, this information isn’t so malleable that it can be finessed away from our shared affinity for personal-vehicle commuting. Perhaps it’s because the bus doesn’t come through our neighbourhood, or because the subway presents an intense and twice-daily invasion of our personal space, or because cycling means taking our lives in our hands. Regardless of the reason, the vast majority leave the house car keys in hand.

Observation #1: We all love our cars.

No self-respecting urbanite envisions car-centric urban utopias, but the vast majority – around 70% – of commuters in each city travel to work by car (by themselves or with others). Interestingly, for example, Halifax’s density of 68 people per square-km to Toronto’s 866 might suggest that Toronto would be better designed to accommodate the higher population, but some in Toronto commute from famously far-flung distances, and Halifax’s sizable rural population is not adequately served by transit to entice commuters from their cars.

In other words, density doesn’t appear to be a factor, and yet…

Observation #2: Increases in density reduce the number of single-occupant vehicles, but don’t necessarily get people out of their cars.

Note: Montreal is missing its “Other” category figure because the increase in density (0.83%) proportional to the increase in “Other” commuting (22.9%) was so small that the change charted beyond the boundaries of the graph. Recall, though, that the number of commuters using “other” modes is so small that changes in driving, public-transit use, and cycling/walking likely involve many more people and therefore have a far greater impact overall.

The good news is that single-occupancy vehicles are reduced when density increases; the bad news is that we seem fastidiously iron-fisted when it comes to letting go of car commuting. Halifax is the only of the four cities whose commuters are less likely to walk or cycle as density increases; instead, we switch overwhelmingly to public transit. The inverse relationship between Montrealers’ propensities to take the metro as opposed to walk or cycle is probably explained, at least in part, by its impressive 502-kilometre network of bike lanes.

However, bike lanes themselves don’t appear to be overly persuasive in enticing commuters to join a work-bound peloton…

Observation #3: The availability of other modes of transportation doesn’t necessarily mean people use them.

Taking a closer look at the relationship between metres of bike lanes per square-km in Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal compared to the percentage of commuters who walk or ride their bikes (see links for sources), it would seem that providing bike lanes isn’t necessarily correlated to increasing the number of people who use them.

I would have loved to write about the kilometres of bike lanes per square-km; sadly only Montreal would have been greater than one. And to be fair, although Halifax and Toronto have somewhat comparable total areas (5,495.62 and 5,903.63 square-km, respectively), Toronto has vastly more bike-lane-suitable stretches of road, suggesting that its 90 km of bike lanes lags disproportionately to Halifax’s 70. Montreal’s bike network is far and away the most extensive of the four cities, but Montreal also has the greatest number of drivers of the four cities (by a 0.25% margin over Toronto). And even though a demarcated lane is a victory for most advocates of multi-modal transportation, in and of themselves, they do not appear make cycling easier. Ottawa, for example, with its 150 km of bike lanes, laments a number of concerns with on-road lanes, such as lanes ending in the middle of two merging roads.

This raises the question not whether lanes are worthwhile in encouraging cycling, but what programs and policies (e.g. bike-sharing, mandatory shower facilities in new commercial buildings), infrastructure (e.g. divided bike lanes and covered racks), incentives (corporate tax breaks based on percentage of employees who commute by foot or bicycle), and disincentives (gas and congestion taxes) ought to be coupled with lanes to encourage commuting by bicycle.

And more broadly, perhaps the question is not why we take the bus, walk, or cycle so little, but rather why we drive so much. Each of these cities is served by a transit system, and although progress may be slower than many prefer, each is making efforts to increase bike-friendliness. Is it because transit planning can’t keep up with sprawl? Or is it because these cities are just too big to serve widely through alternate transportation? Is it because we would only change when we had to start paying for road congestion and air pollution? Or in the end, could it be that despite the rhetoric for more bike lanes and bus routes, we really do love to drive?

This introductory analysis would benefit greatly from the perspectives of those with more nuanced understandings of each city’s commuting patterns, why we choose what we do, and how we might change. With this, I pass this over for comments, analyses, speculation, and wild guesses.

Recommended

10 comments

  1. Isn’t the other methodological problem that the StatsCan survey is based on a single day, meaning that these numbers don’t take into account seasonal adjustments?

  3. I would agree that a more robust analysis would require more data, but not because there aren’t enough data points — you aren’t going to get a better sample size than the census. The problem is that there is too much data — or, rather, that the data is an average for the entire census metropolitan area. If you want to track trends you need to drill down into sub-levels.

    For example, you could see that walking trips to work are largely confined to the downtown core, with somewhat lower levels in some of the other centres (Yonge/Eg, North York Centre). Downtown has seen measurable increases in walking trips (proportionally and absolutely) as a result of the huge influx of residents over the past decade or so, but for the most part walking/cycling commuting trips are negligible across the GTA and have remained so over the past 10 to 20 years.

    You could also look into things like the proportion of jobs that are located in the downtown area vs. in outlying suburban office parks that are more poorly served by transit… and compare modal split for commutes to downtown vs. suburban workplaces… proportion of downtown employees offered free parking at work (e.g. Ottawa’s high modal split has been attributed to a severely limited downtown parking supply).

    Also, note that while there is a focus in the article on correlating travel patterns with bike lane density, the census data combine walking and cycling, and in Toronto this split leans fairly heavily toward walking (again probably largely because of downtown residents walking to work).

    The Census may not be the best tool for some of these analyses… for Toronto the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) is a better bet, I don’t know if the other municipalities stated have a similar database.

  4. it’s much better, and you’ll learn a lot more, when you compare cities in 2006 to how they were in 2001 and 1996, etc. It’s really hard to compare Ottawa to Montreal, for example, because they vary so much in other areas. Whereas Ottawa has a highly centralized government workforce and that attracts a certain demographic, that may not be true in Montreal. They’re different cultures, as well, have completely different built forms, etc. Then you’ve got Halifax, which is mostly made up of rural areas – most of it isn’t city. In fact, the density statistic you reference is completely meaningless – it’s like standing in the middle of Toronto and wondering why it’s so busy when Canada has a population density of one person for every three and a half square kilometres or so. I mean, gosh, what are all these buildings doing in the way? According to the statistics, you should be able to yell and have nobody hear you, shouldn’t you?

    You’re right when you say statistics can be manipulated and misleading when presented in a way that does that. Of course, this article seems to do just that. Please, you can do better.

  5. Padriac and Glen — You raise important points; thanks for pointing out those issues. More broadly, you raise the question of the census data’s utility, particularly at a federal and provincial level. I would hope that each of these cities (all cities, ideally) maintains more detailed data (including seasonal variations and a survey frequency of more than once every five years) for municipal policy-making. But the federal government, for example, could only be sure it was comparing apples to apples by looking at statistics that were compiled using the same methods, i.e. StatsCan vs. individual cities with possibly different surveys. In other words, in 2011, after the next census, which data set is the federal government going to consider when making the decision to keep or axe the transit-pass incentive? If it IS the census data, which may continue to suffer the same shortcomings you’ve highlighted, then the question remains of how the federal and provincial governments can compare the efficacy of sustainable commuting programs across cities. Again, really great points.

  7. I wanted to add that the figures about the increase in the number of residents whom travel outside the city for work is listed as a percentage of population, not workforce. That roughly works out to an increase of more than 100,000 Toronto residents whom traveled outside the city for employment or ~7.5% of the workforce. The impact of this trend is of the utmost importance for the city. To quote Mayor Miller :

    “The bad news is that the job growth is happening in the region surrounding Toronto, not in the city itself. This means that while more and more people live in Toronto, increasingly, they must travel, usually by car, to jobs outside the city. And, it shouldn’t come as a surprise then that because of the employment boom outside of Toronto, that median household income in the Toronto region is higher than within the City of Toronto itself, where over the twenty year period of 1980 to 2000 the number of low-income households increased from 18 per cent to 22 per cent of all households in the city.”

  8. Emily you might be interested in Toronto’s look at the data…….www.toronto.ca/demographics/pdf/2006_labour_force_backgrounder.pdf. The raw data and the city synopsis also contains gender differences. I found this tidbit interesting , “Another gender difference in
    modal choice is that while men are more likely to bicycle to work, women are more likely
    to walk. “

  9. For those unaware, the boundaries for CMAs (Census Metropolitan Areas) not only contain urban and suburban areas, but also outlying villages and rural lands. Toronto’s CMA extends from Milton to Cookstown to Uxbridge. While I understand the purpose of this, it is hard to criticize someone who lives in Keswick for driving to his job in Scarborough (besides for living in Keswick, but that is a topic for another time).

    What might be interesting to look at is the the percentage of 9-5 jobs are located in the downtown core. Then of the people who work these jobs, what percentage drive compared to those who take alternative modes (including driving to a transit station to get downtown). Getting into downtown during peak periods is one thing transit accels at, and it would be interesting to see how the usage of the various transit systems compare in this regard.

    Finally, here is a good map to look at in terms of how we commute:

    http://thestar.blogs.com/maps/2009/10/map-of-the-week-how-we-commute-redux.html

  10. I’m no expert on transit, but perhaps it’s just a feasibility issue? As Brent points out, many in the downtown in Toronto do walk/cycle – because they can. And the subway is famously crowded all the time anyway – it’s not like people aren’t using the TTC enough. To me it seems like it’s just not possible for most people to get to work at 8/9am every morning unless they use their own cars (at least in the GTA). Public transit’s biggest issue isn’t invasion of privacy, it’s the fact that it’s slow and sometimes unreliable. Quite simply, commuting long distances using public transit is very difficult, and given the choice to drive, people will ALWAYS take it, even if they hate driving.

    As someone who’s spent a considerable amount of time in rush hour traffic, I’ll testify that driving is rarely a pleasure – if public transit is just as reliable,cost effective,and convenient,it will always be used (and to a great extent, that’s why Toronto’s subways are packed.)