Traffic on the roads | Congestion is back in force, but teleworking persists

Congestion is officially back on Canada’s roads. Even as twice as many people continue to work from home, the time spent commuting to the office is almost back to pre-pandemic levels, both on roads and on public transit.

A recovery that continues

As of May 2024, the most recent data from a study released Monday by Statistics Canada, the number of “commuters” – workers who spend most of their time outside their homes – was 16.5 million. That’s a clear upward trend after the pandemic lows of 2020 and 2021. In fact, that number jumped by 585,000, a 3.7 per cent increase from May 2023. Statistics Canada says the increase “is mainly due to employment growth (+373,000 or +1.9 per cent) and an increase in the proportion of the employed population working outside of their homes.”

Teleworking, again and again

So far, 18.7% of the population still works primarily from home. That’s down from the peak of almost 25% in May 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, but still much higher than the meager 7% before COVID-19, in 2016. In short, there are fewer and fewer teleworkers, but their number remains “more than twice as high” as before. In Montreal, 20.6% of residents still telework; that’s much lower than elsewhere, such as Ottawa-Gatineau, which has 34%. Unlike other provinces, Quebec is also following a clear downward trend in telework, having gone from 22.2% to 18.4% in the last year.

Still queen, the car

To date, about 81.5% of Canada’s 16.5 million “commuters” primarily use a car, which also includes trucks and vans, to get to work. That’s down slightly by 1.1 percentage points from the previous year, but still well below the 2022 peak of 84.2%. And in a sign that the “solo car” phenomenon is still going strong, nearly 90% of drivers driving to work are alone in their vehicles.

Slowly but surely, by public transport

In public transit, ridership is also continuing to recover. In May, 11.4% of Canadians used it to go to work, an increase of 1.3 percentage points compared to the previous year. This is much better than in 2021, but the pre-pandemic peak of around 12.6% has not yet been reached. In the metropolis, figures from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) support this: from June to August, the bus went from 80% to 85% of its pre-pandemic ridership, while the metro reached 82%, a gain of three points in two months. In general, hybrid workers are more likely to use public transit, by 25%.

29 minutes on average in Montreal

It takes an average of 29 minutes for a Montreal commuter to reach their place of work every day, we also learn in the report. This is good for fifth place among the 15 largest metropolitan areas in the country. In fact, only residents of Toronto, Oshawa, Hamilton and Vancouver take longer than residents of the metropolis. In Quebec City, this figure is 23 minutes. The capital is also one of the urban areas with the lowest share of workers taking public transit, which means that slightly more people walk or cycle to work.