Canadian commuters are still car-centric, survey finds

Despite the bluster of Canada's public transit movement, pressure to lead fit, healthy lifestyles and complaints from commuters mired in rage-inducing traffic, it seems we are still a country of drivers.

The vast majority of us still get behind the wheel to get to work, according to new statistics, and public transit systems have seen only a small handful of new riders. The nation's community of commuter cyclists isn't growing. And very few of us would deign to catch a ride in someone else's car.

Perish the thought. More people walk to work than get into the passenger seat.

The National Household Survey released new details on Wednesday about Canada's commuting habits. But those new details paint an old picture.

Roughly 15.4 million Canadians commuted to work in 2011, using cars, buses, bikes and occasionally ferries. The survey found that three-quarters of those commuters, 11.4 million folks, drove to work.

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Another 5.6 per cent of commuters did so by climbing into a passenger seat of someone else's car. That leaves just shy of 20 per cent of commuters to use modes of travel other than personal cars.

The biggest piece of that pie is transit riders, which make up 12 per cent of all Canadians.

With an increasing awareness of the cost of vehicle emissions and reports from major urban centres regarding the economic impact of congested roadways, one might think Canadians may have come around to the benefits of mass transit.

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But that is not the case. In 2006, a similar 11 per cent of commuters used public transit. Perhaps that is because public transit has a real and notable cost: time.

The average commute by car was 23. 7 minutes, compared to public transit commutes by bus (40.4 minutes), subway (44.6 minutes) and light rail or commuter train (52.5 minutes).

Riding a bicycle to work led to the fastest commute, with an average of 12.7 minutes. But that didn't help the bike movement gain traction. 201,800 people, or 1.3 per cent, cycled to work in 2011. It was the same percentage as in 2006. Another 5.7 per cent of commuters were close enough to the office to walk, according to the survey.

When it is all added up, it appears that when Canadians think of long-distance commuting, they think of cars. They don't mind the traffic, the isolation and the cost of gas, as long as it gets them to work a few minutes sooner.