Commuting patterns

[Docere]

Starting up a thread on commuting flow data from the 2016 census.

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-re...NAMEE=&VNAMEF=

I begin with some Greater Golden Horseshoe cities but by no means does it need to be limited to Ontario.

Hamilton is becoming more and more integrated into the GTA.

67% work in Hamilton and 25.8% work in the GTA. It should be noted that nearly half of this "GTA" commuting is to neighboring Burlington (11.5%). Similar numbers each to Oakville (4.1%), Mississauga (3.9%) and Toronto (3.8%).

Barrie is a little further behind.

In Barrie, 69.7% work in Barrie or surrounding townships. 18.6% work in the GTA, including 8.7% in York Region and 6.5% in the city of Toronto.

Going west of Toronto, I looked at Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo. These cities are far less integrated in terms of commuting patterns.

In Guelph, 74% work in Guelph or surrounding townships. 10.8% work in the GTA. Not surprisingly the western GTA suburbs have the majority of Guelph GTA commuters, Peel (4.5%) and Halton (3.9%). Mississauga (3.1%) takes the most Guelph workers among individual GTA municipalities. Just 2.4% work in Toronto. About a tenth (9.8%) work in Kitchener, Waterloo or Cambridge.

Combining Kitchener and Waterloo, an overwhelming majority work in Waterloo region (87.7%). A very small number work in the GTA (3.9%).

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Docere

67% work in Hamilton and 25.8% work in the GTA. It should be noted that nearly half of this "GTA" commuting is to neighboring Burlington (11.5%).

Isn't Burlington in the Hamilton CMA though? Looking at the data, far more people commute from Burlington to Hamilton than they do to Mississauga or Toronto. I thought Burlington would be more evenly split than it is.

[Docere]

Burlington is in both the Hamilton CMA and the GTA.

[someone123]

Halifax gets a lot of commuters from some nearby areas. For example, about 20,000 people live in East Hants and around 60% of them commute to Halifax (more than I thought). East Hants is right next to the Halifax airport and commuters there can get to a lot of jobs in metro Halifax in 20 or 30 minutes. Hants County as a census division could conceivably be added to the Halifax CMA at one point I guess. Hants County is a good counterexample when people say that the Halifax CMA is hugely bloated and should have a smaller population. The CMA is conservative in terms of its northern boundary, and that area is much more densely populated than the eastern areas that make up 2/3 of the Halifax CMA land area.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by someone123

Isn't Burlington in the Hamilton CMA though? Looking at the data, far more people commute from Burlington to Hamilton than they do to Mississauga or Toronto. I thought Burlington would be more evenly split than it is.

They do? This is the data I see (for Burlington residence):

Burlington 33,060
Oakville 11,605
Mississauga 9,100
Toronto 8,970
Hamilton 8,655

There are twice as many Burlington workers going to Toronto/Mississauga (23%) as Hamilton (11%).

42% of Burlington workers work in Burlington, 15% in Oakville.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Docere

They do? This is the data I see (for Burlington residence):

Burlington 33,060
Oakville 11,605
Mississauga 9,100
Toronto 8,970
Hamilton 8,655

There are twice as many Burlington workers going to Toronto/Mississauga (23%) as Hamilton (11%).

Hmm.. yes, I saw that too when I looked again, and it is more what I would have expected. I must have made a mistake before (it is easy to inadvertently switch place of work and place of residence for example).

It seems debatable that Burlington should be considered a part of metro Hamilton when more commuters go to other metro areas.

[Innsertnamehere]

The real problem is that Hamilton and especially Oshawa are still a separate CMA from Toronto.

[MTLskyline]

This is a few years old, but it gives an idea of 24hrs worth of transit activity on the STM:
• Video Link

[Docere]

Oshawa really only remains a CMA because of the "can't be abolished" rule set by Statscan. It's already part of the GTA.

39% work in Oshawa and 60% in Oshawa, Whitby or Clarington.

18% work in the city of Toronto, 11% in Ajax or Pickering. When you add in other Toronto CMA municipalities it rises to 37%.

Meanwhile, Oshawa's "suburb" of Whitby is really a full fledged Toronto suburb.

32% work in the city of Toronto, more than in Whitby itself (26%). Another 14% in Ajax-Pickering and 6% in Markham. So 52% of Whitby workers commute to Toronto, Ajax-Pickering or Markham. 58% work in the Toronto CMA. Just 12% work in Oshawa and 2% in Clarington.

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by MTLskyline

This is a few years old, but it gives an idea of 24hrs worth of transit activity on the STM:
• Video Link

This timelapse shows perfectly why we desperately need the blue line extension and the pink line.

[trebor204]

The commuting flow data tends to give some interesting results.

For example, look at the results whose 'Place of Work' is Wood Buffalo, AB (Fort McMurray)

A total of 510 workers 'reside' in Cape Breton and another 265 workers 'reside' in Halifax but commute to Wood Buffalo.

These workers live in Wood Buffalo (work camps), and work in Wood Buffalo, but declared their home outside of Wood Buffalo.

Likewise for university students, the parents will declared them as living in their city, but are actually studying (and working part) in another city.

[balletomane]

It looks like St. Andrews (RM) can be added to the Winnipeg CMA, with 53% of its workforce now commuting to Winnipeg which is another 12,000 residents. Niverville, with almost 5,000 residents is now at 56%.
Other municipalities in the MB Capital Region that are not part of the CMA are at the following,
Selkirk, CY (24%)
Stonewall, T (50%)
Teulon, T (43%)
Rockwood, RM (50%)
Cartier, RM (50%)
So maybe by 2021 the entire capital region will coincide with the CMA boundaries.

[SignalHillHiker]

For the St. John's CMA...

Town of Torbay: 34.1% work in St. John's
Town of Paradise: 30.0% work in St. John's
Town of Portugal Cove-St. Philip's: 29.5% work in St. John's
City of Mount Pearl: 28.4% work in St. John's
Town of Conception Bay South: 21.9% work in St. John's

Beyond that there are just too many little towns to mention, but the northernmost that is included in the CMA is:

Town of Pouch Cove: 29.0% work in St. John's.

Just outside the limits of the CMA are places like...

Town of Holyrood: 12.4% work in St. John's



Town of Cape Broyle: 7.2% work in St. John's



Nearest CA to St. John's is Bay Roberts, and that seems to pick up most of the commuters from Holyrood and west.



Cape Broyle and south is a high unemployment area and they don't seem to be going anywhere en masse for work.

[Acajack]

One thing I've noticed for some regions is that "provincial boundaries matter", and to a lesser degree "language matters" too.

Cornwall is about the same distance from Ottawa and Montreal (and the highway to Montreal is actually better), but *way* more people commute to Ottawa from Cornwall than from Cornwall to Montreal. There it's no doubt both a "language" and a "province" issue.

But if we look at Hawkesbury which is also roughly equidistant from Montreal and Ottawa, in addition to being about 90% francophone, it still has way more people working in Ottawa than in Montreal.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by MTLskyline

This is a few years old, but it gives an idea of 24hrs worth of transit activity on the STM:

Same thing for the TTC:

• Video Link

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by MTLskyline

This is a few years old, but it gives an idea of 24hrs worth of transit activity on the STM:
• Video Link

cool video, but I wish it was weighted somehow to indicate flows. Some of those metros heading back to Laval at 830am are obviously less full than those heading from Laval into Montreal.

Also, does a video like this exist for Okotoks-->Calgary?

[megadude]

Originally Posted by Docere

They do? This is the data I see (for Burlington residence):

Burlington 33,060
Oakville 11,605
Mississauga 9,100
Toronto 8,970
Hamilton 8,655

There are twice as many Burlington workers going to Toronto/Mississauga (23%) as Hamilton (11%).

42% of Burlington workers work in Burlington, 15% in Oakville.

I lived in Burlington for 1.5 years recently. I was one of the GO train commuters to go downtown TO. Of all the the people I talked to work about (about 20), not a single one worked in Hamilton. It was Burlington and then TO. After that it was it was one or two people working in locations like Brampton, North York, Mississauga and Milton. Though only three of those people were blue collar. They worked in Burlington and Milton.

I think if someone had a decent job in Hamilton and was buying a house just outside of the Hammer it would be somewhere more affordable than Burlington. Get more bang for the buck. But if they were married, their spouse's job location would play a factor too.

It would be nice if more companies would open up offices in DT Hamilton. I wouldn't mind at all doing that drive from Burlington instead of taking GO train into DT TO.

There was somewhat of an exodus over the years. You'd think companies would be attracted to the cheaper rent and access to the talent pool in an area with hundreds of thousands of residents and an excellent school in town. Five years ago PWC left Hamilton and set up in a new building in Oakville, though they consolidated their Mississauga location to the new building as well.

At one point all four big accounting firms were in Hamilton and now only one remains.

However, I've read that downtown Hamilton is improving and lowering their vacancy rate. I hope this trend continues.

Where I work, we have about 20 people in a satellite office in Burlington. From what I can tell, only two of those people live in Hamilton. The rest are locally, Oakville, Sauga, Milton, Georgetown and even Cambridge and Ayr in Waterloo Region. Unfortunately, that office is closing in a few months and being consolidated into North Toronto office! That is going to suck.

[Docere]

In Abbotsford, 62% work in Abbotsford and 30% in Metro Vancouver.

Mission has 42% working in Metro Vancouver. 32% work in Mission and 24% in Abbotsford.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by trebor204

Likewise for university students, the parents will declared them as living in their city, but are actually studying (and working part) in another city.

That one is tricky; the census takes place in May, so in many cases many university students who are from out of town are physically out of town for the summer. Exceptions of course being grad students who are typically there 12 months of the year, international students who stay in Canada during the summer, and domestic students who stay in their university city to work for the summer. However, students physically live in their university city for the majority of the year.

Case in point - Kingston, where over 90% of Queen's students are not from Kingston. This issue came up on City Council several years ago when they were trying to determine new electoral ward boundaries and students felt they were underrepresented as they were not counted as living in Kingston at the time of the census.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by megadude

It would be nice if more companies would open up offices in DT Hamilton. I wouldn't mind at all doing that drive from Burlington instead of taking GO train into DT TO.

There was somewhat of an exodus over the years. You'd think companies would be attracted to the cheaper rent and access to the talent pool in an area with hundreds of thousands of residents and an excellent school in town. Five years ago PWC left Hamilton and set up in a new building in Oakville, though they consolidated their Mississauga location to the new building as well.

At one point all four big accounting firms were in Hamilton and now only one remains.

However, I've read that downtown Hamilton is improving and lowering their vacancy rate. I hope this trend continues.

Where I work, we have about 20 people in a satellite office in Burlington. From what I can tell, only two of those people live in Hamilton. The rest are locally, Oakville, Sauga, Milton, Georgetown and even Cambridge and Ayr in Waterloo Region. Unfortunately, that office is closing in a few months and being consolidated into North Toronto office! That is going to suck.

There has been a trend in very recent years towards greater centralization of offices in the GTA. Another of the Big 4 accounting firms, Deloitte, centralized all seven of its GTA offices into one new Downtown Toronto office two years ago. This is the opposite of a trend I remember 10 years ago, that was even discussed on SSP, about large companies opening more and more suburban offices, allowing people living in areas like Mississauga to work in Mississauga; part of that trend even included people living in Toronto commuting to the suburbs, which was helping even out traffic flows. That still exists of course, but I foresee it will be reduced as more companies develop Downtown Toronto tunnel-vision and assume all Millennials want to live and work there.

What's lost in these types of moves is that it takes away offices from where people live. Not everyone lives, or wants to live in, or can afford to live in Downtown Toronto, and not everyone wants to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting from Hamilton, Oshawa, or even suburban parts of the City of Toronto. I know another company that undertook a consolidation similar to Deloitte's happened and a significant number of employees quit because they refused to commute to Downtown Toronto from the suburban area of the GTA where they lived and worked. It also puts massive strain on infrastructure such as the TTC and GO Transit that has been unable to keep up with increased demand.