How do people in Metro Vancouver get to work? 4 interesting facts from the 2016 census

How long are you stuck in traffic every day? Are there more or less people using public transit to get to work? Are people travelling elsewhere for their jobsor staying in the city?

New data from the 2016 census released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday focused on people's commutes how they get to work, how long they're in trafficand where their work is.

• Highlights: 2016 census data on education, labour and commuting

No two people have the exact same commute unless they live in the same house and carpool every day to the same office but a close look at all the data in the census reveals some interesting trends.

Here are four things that immediately stood out to us.

People driving to work continues to go down...

It's been a slow but steady change in how people have become less dependent on cars to get to their jobs.

In 1996, just 21.8 per cent of Metro Vancouver workers said they bused, walked or cycled to work. Twenty years later, thenumber was 29.5 per cent.

Another way of looking at it? Between 1996 and 2016, the number of people who said they got to work in the driver's seat of a vehicle went up by 158,630.Butthe number of people who said they biked, walked or took public transit went up by 162,205.

"We've had this remarkable cultural change in terms of how we see transportation and moving around the region," said Andy Yan, director of SFU'sCity Program.

... but Vancouver isn't as transit-happy as we might think

In total, 40.6 per cent of Metro Vancouver commuters use what Statistics Canada terms "sustainable transportation",meaning biking/walking/public transit plus carpooling.

And while Metro Vancouver beats Montreal and Toronto when it comes to the percentage of cyclists and walkers, it's last when it comes to public transit goers 20.4 per cent, compared to Montreal at 22.3 per cent and Toronto at 24.3 per cent.

In fact, the greatest percentage ofcommuters who said they used public transit to get to work wasn't Vancouver, Surrey orBurnaby(they all went down), but New Westminster, at31.4 per cent.

Commute times are also going up

In spite of more people using "sustainable transportation" methods, the length of commutes increased in 14 of 21 Metro Vancouver municipalities since the last census including Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surreyby around an extra two to three minutes on average.

• Here's how much time you save by commuting anywhere in B.C. but Vancouver

Yansaid it's likely partly a function of most cars on the road overalland partly a function of decaying roads and bridges.

"We've had a historic transition of people changing their commuting habits, but we haven't had the level of infrastructure investment needed to support that."

Working outside the city

What do Vancouver, Abbotsford and Chilliwack have in common?

Well, they're the only municipalities in the Lower Mainland where more than 60 per cent of people who commute live in the same city they work in.

With the exception of Richmond, the rest are below 50 per cent some well below.

In the District of North Vancouver, for example, it's 23 per cent. In the City of Langley, it's 17 per cent. But the biggest of any significant city in the region is Port Moody, at 12 per cent.

(An interactive version ofthe map created byCensusMapper is available here)

With files from Tara Carman