News

In what some observers believe could be a turning point for the country, Statistics Canada says that for the first time since it started studying how Canadians get to work in 1996, a smaller percentage of us were making the trip behind the wheel.

It may appear to be a small decline. But the 2006 census data yesterday showing the percentage of Canadians who drive to work at 72.3 per cent, down from 73.8 per cent in 2001, is a departure from a century-long trend of increasing automobile use. The numbers also show gains for public transit, carpooling and cycling.

"A reversal in the long-term historical trend ... is, I think, firmly in place now," said Michael Roschlau, head of the Canadian Urban Transit Association. "...To me, this is really groundbreaking information."

However, the numbers released yesterday also contain some of the bad news commuters have been used to hearing. For instance, the median distance travelled each day to work continues to rise, hitting 7.6 kilometres in 2006, up from 7.2 in 2001 and 7.0 in 1996.

Also, in raw numbers, Canada's roads still had 714,900 more cars heading to work in 2006 than in 2001, a 7.2-per-cent increase. (That's down sharply from the increase between 1996 and 2001, when just under one million new cars were added.)

Cindy Strugnell, 37, commutes every day from Whitby, Ont., into downtown Toronto for her job in advertising, and says the stress of her 90-minute-plus trek has prompted her to switch to the (delay-plagued) GO Transit commuter train system for a couple of days a week.

"It's does wear you down. It tries your patience for sure," Ms. Strugnell said of her commute along Highway 401, Toronto's congested main east-west highway. "A lot of my peers do a lot of commuting, and I see the exhausted look on their faces on Thursday of the work week."

Her partner, Karen Wickiam, 37, a nurse, said she has largely stopped taking shifts at downtown Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children solely because of the worsening commute, opting instead to work at Oshawa General: "I couldn't take it any more. ... It was just miserable."

An increase in public transit's share of commuters suggests others are getting fed up, too. Over all, public transit use rose to 11 per cent of commuters, up from 10.5 per cent in 2001. Oshawa (near Whitby, east of Toronto) had a 2.3-per-cent increase in the proportion of commuters using public transit.

But the biggest boost to public transit came in Calgary, where it rose 3.1 per cent as the city struggles with oil-boom-driven traffic problems and expands its C-Train light-rail system.

Optimism at these shifts was tempered by other numbers released yesterday. More Canadians were commuting to workplaces in the sprawling suburbs of major cities, away from established public transit networks.

These workers were more likely to drive.

Over all, 5.9 per cent more people were working in "central municipalities" in 2006, according to Statscan, while the number of people working in suburban municipalities grew twice as quickly, at 12.2 per cent.

Leading the pack among large municipalities was Vaughan, Ont., on Toronto's northern boundary, which had 22.2-per-cent job growth since 2001. The number for Surrey, B.C., near Vancouver, grew by 17 per cent, and for Laval, outside Montreal, by 15.8 per cent. Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute said it is important not to overstate the significance of the shift away from the car. "Keep in mind that for most of the last century, the trend was pretty steady in terms of increasing automobile travel," said Mr. Litman, whose B.C. hometown leads the country in cycling and walking, according to yesterday's census data. "[Car use has] pretty much levelled off in most developed countries, due to, essentially, saturation."

While there have been investments in public transit, Mr. Litman said efforts to promote carpooling and cycling can coax drivers out of their cars even in suburban areas, where public transit is scarce.

Carpooling, yesterday's numbers suggest, is up slightly, no doubt partly because of increasing gas prices. Between 2001 and 2006, the share of commuters that rode to work as a passenger in a car rose to 7.7 per cent from 6.9 per cent.

Cycling to work, while showing a 20-per-cent increase, still accounted for only 1.3 per cent of commuters, up from 1.2.

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How to discourage reliance on cars

In addition to improving public transit and stopping sprawl, cities around the world are experimenting with other - often unpopular - new policies aimed at discouraging reliance on the car.

PUTTING A PRICE ON DRIVING

New York city council voted this week for an $8 toll for cars headed into the most congested part of Manhattan, a controversial proposal that the state legislature must approve.

It was inspired by London's £8 ($16) congestion charge, which officials say has reduced traffic by about 20 per cent.

Stockholm has brought in a similar, though less expensive, charge, and other cities in Europe and the United States are studying the idea.

TEAR IT DOWN, THEY WON'T COME

Traffic planners in San Francisco were baffled in the mid-1990s when they shut down the city's Central Freeway amid predictions of dire traffic jams yet the rest of the city's streets moved as usual. Traffic experts said the freeway was carrying "induced traffic," and drivers simply adapted, switching to other modes or routes.

Similar predictions of gridlock also failed to materialize when the city tore down the Embarcadero Freeway, which carried 100,000 cars a day before it was damaged in a 1989 earthquake. Both examples are cited in debates about other urban expressways - such as Toronto's waterfront Gardiner - and by traffic planners who argue that building or widening roads simply attracts more cars.

PAY UP FOR PARKING

Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California at Los Angeles, studied the effects of free or cheap curbside parking on one 15-block district in L.A.

He concluded that drivers cruising for curbside parking spaces accounted for an average of 68 per cent of all traffic in the area. Over a year, the distance travelled by cruisers equalled 38 trips around the world.

His solution? Charge "market prices" for curbside parking - enough to ensure that demand doesn't outstrip supply - so drivers won't circle the block endlessly for a free spot.

Jeff Gray

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A long way to work

The longest daily trips to work (each way) were in Ontario.

Median commute, kilometres

Oshawa: 11.0

Toronto: 9.4

Barrie: 9.0

Hamilton: 8.3

Calgary: 8.2

Montreal: 8.1

Ottawa; Gatineau: 8.1

% commuting 25 km or more

Barrie: 35.3%

Oshawa: 32.6%

Abbotsford: 24.4%

SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA