No strong link between income and commute
Public transit users were more likely to have longer commutes than those who travel by other modes.
In the GTA, 59.3 per cent of public transit users experienced commute times of 45 minutes or more.
The number was 23.2 per cent for drivers who don’t carry passengers, and just 7.3 per cent for cyclists.
Of the GTA municipalities reflected in the census, Ajax had the highest commute times in 2016, with the average resident spending almost 39 minutes each day to get to work.
Burlington residents spent the least amount of time getting to their jobs, at just under 29 minutes.
Measured by distance, residents of Brock had the farthest to travel to work, at an average of 33.8 kilometres.
City of Toronto residents had the shortest average distance, at 10.6 kilometres.
Across the region, the number of commuters who are spending at least an hour to get to work is on the rise, with17.3 per cent reporting their one-way commute times at 60 minutes or more. The group grew by 1.4 percentage points between 2011 and 2016.
That coincided with a drop of 1.2 percentage points in the number of residents with the shortest commutes, which were defined as less than 15 minutes.
There didn’t appear to be strong correlation between an individuals’ income and their commute time, suggesting wealthier GTA residents aren’t leveraging their higher earnings to lessen the burden of commuting.
The median household income for people whose commutes lasted more than an hour was $112,211. Those who spent less than 15 minutes commuting reported median incomes of $106,622.