More women than men using transit,
Experts say commuter gap found in census likely reflects larger gender inequality trend
Cindy Smith has spent years travelling between her job in downtown Toronto and her home in Courtice, about 60 kilometres away, by public transit.
“It’s the only way for me to get down here,” she said. “I wouldn’t drive. It would be insane.”
Today, the transit blogger is one of almost 400,000 women who primarily commute by transit in the Greater Toronto Area, and together, account for 57.8 per cent of transit commuters in the GTA, according to new census data released Wednesday.
Though Smith says she largely commutes by GO Train to save time, experts say gender inequality could help explain the larger trend — more women than men are travelling to and from work on transit.
“Generally, women have lower incomes on average and so they’re obviously more price sensitive to transportation costs, along with other costs,” said Anna Kramer, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto who studies social equity issues in transportation and land use planning.
Other factors could include hierarchical dynamics in families.
“Especially in families with one car you may see that men will get the car more often or have primary access to the car,” Kramer said.
At the same time, there is increasing poverty in the suburbs — communities built for the car. “It might make the commute quite a lot more difficult for women in these areas,” she said, adding that women tend to make a lot more stops along their commutes than men to drop off kids or pick up groceries.
It’s a fairly consistent trend across the region: more women than men are commuting to work on public transit, while more men than women are getting to work by car, truck or van.
In Toronto, 58.5 per cent of the people who commute by public tran- sit are women and 41.5 per cent are men. While 58.4 per cent of people who commute by car, truck or van are men and 41.6 per cent are women, census data shows.
Smith can make it from her door to work in about an hour and 20 minutes, she said, adding “there’s no way I could do it in an hour and 20 during rush hour from my house.”
Her commute used to be longer — but she’s recently made a shift from her car-free life to save on time.
“It became harder and harder to rely on bus service in my suburb of Courtice because it’s a very car-centric community so they kept cutting back service,” she said.
Now, she takes a car to the GO Station in Oshawa instead of a bus, saving herself 20 minutes, before continuing to Toronto.
Still, she’s spending hours on transit each week, and in that time, she’s seen some things: people brushing their teeth, plucking their eyebrows and even clipping their nails.
To address the larger issues of inequality and lessen the burden on women, Kramer said there are things that can be done within transportation planning — including increasing the transfer period. In Toronto, that initiative won support of the TTC board this week and will go before city council next week.