Toronto workers have longest commutes in Canada: StatsCan
CBC
Long gone are the empty roads and unfilled train and bus seats of the COVID-19 pandemic days.
More Canadians are commuting to work and the average commuting time has returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to new data released by Statistics Canada Monday.
The number of commuters reached 16.5 million this May, up 585,000 compared to the same time last year, the agency said. The data continues a rising trend over the past few years following major declines in 2020 and 2021 when pandemic restrictions kept many workers at home.
The average Canadian now spends 26.4 minutes travelling to work, just above the previous high of 26.3 minutes in May 2016, according to the data.
Cities in and around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area are bearing the brunt of the country's long commutes. Toronto has the highest commuting time of 33.3 minutes, the data shows.
Toronto commuter Jonievy Luther Cabansag said, if she's lucky, it takes her an hour-and-a-half to commute from Scarborough to downtown for work.
"That's why I always budget two hours for travel just to make sure I won't come to work late," she said.
She said — 90 per cent of the time — she agrees with the meme that "Toronto is an hour away from Toronto."
After Toronto, topping the list for longest commutes are Oshawa (32.6 minutes), Barrie (30.7 minutes), and Hamilton (30.6 minutes), where workers have longer commutes than people living in Vancouver (30.5 minutes) and Montreal (29 minutes).
Steve Farber, a transportation expert and professor at the University of Toronto, said he's not surprised by the longer commute times seen in cities around Toronto.
"A pretty large share of commuters living in Hamilton or Oshawa are actually coming to work either in downtown Toronto or elsewhere in the GTA," he said.
Samantha Pereira from Mississauga said it takes her 35 minutes "on a good day" to get to school in Hamilton.
"There's just so many times where I'm just standing there and then the bus just vanishes from the app and just doesn't exist anymore," she said. "I'll just be at the stop and I'm like, where [is] my bus?"
One fifth of Oshawa commuters spend an hour or more getting to work, the highest share among all cities. Toronto (15.7%) has the second largest share of workers with such a long commute, followed by Barrie (14.6 per cent).
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