Is the Drive to Work Driving You Crazy?

Here is What Our Respondents Had to Say

In 2003, we asked visitors to JobQuality.ca to tell us how they feel about issues on commuting to and from work. Below we present the results from this survey. In all, 388 visitors took time to complete the survey (268 women and 117 men). It should be noted that this survey is not truly random and therefore is not representative of Canadian employees as a whole. These findings represent a snapshot of how some visitors to the site feel about commuting issues.

How You Get to Work

As seen in the chart below, a majority of jobquality visitors indicate that they commute to work by car (67 percent). This was lower than the 80 percent of commuters who report travelling to work in a car (as driver or passenger) according to the 2001 census by Statistics Canada. Almost 20 percent of visitors say they use public transit to get to work - almost double the number of workers in the 2001 census who said the same thing (10.5 percent). Eight percent of jobquality visitors say they walk, bicycle, or rollerblade to work – almost identical to the number of workers in the census who said they walked or bicycled to work (7.8 percent).

The Car is King in the Commute to Work

It is perhaps not surprising that so many people drive, but visitors indicate that their employers do not offer much in terms of incentives to get them out of their cars. Almost 34 percent of visitors say their employers offer free or subsidized parking, but only 3 percent offer free or subsidized bus/transit passes.How Long is the Commute?

How Long is the Commute?

On average, jobquality visitors spend just over an hour commuting to and from work each day (64 minutes). Those who travel by car spend just under an hour each day commuting to and from work (56 minutes), those who bicycle or walk take around 40 minutes, and those who take public transit having the longest commutes at 102 minutes.

Working from Home

Less than two percent of visitors indicate that they work from home, but almost one quarter (24 percent) of visitors say they have the option to work from home. Of the 76 percent of those who say they do not have the option to work from home, 66 percent of these individuals say they would like the option to work from home. These findings suggest that a large number of visitors would like the flexibility or option to work from home but do not have this.

Do Commute Times Influence Where You Work and Live?

Do commute times influence where you work and live? For our website visitors, the answer to this question appears to be yes. As seen in the chart below, 44 percent of visitors said that commute times influenced their decision on where they currently work and 53 percent say it has influenced where they live in their city/town. These findings suggest that commute times do have some impact on where visitors chose to work and live. More striking however is the fact that 89 percent of visitors say that commute times would influence any future decisions on where they would chose to work.

The Impact of Commuting 

What impact does commuting have on workers? Respondents to the survey were asked to rate their level of agreement on a series of questions using a scale ranging from 1 (‘strongly agree’) to 5 (‘strongly disagree’). The results are presented in the table below. 

• A majority of respondents agree (‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’) that commute times cause a lot of inconvenience in their lives, take away time they could spend with friends or family, and make it difficult to attend to personal affairs. 
• Almost 61 percent of visitors say that commute times to and from work are getting longer. 
• One-quarter or respondents feel that commute times have a negative impact on their work performance.
• Almost 40 percent of visitors say that the commute time has a negative impact on their level of job satisfaction. 

We would like to thank those visitors who took the time to complete this survey.

Related Articles and Reports 

The following are links to articles or reports on the issue of workplace commuting:

• The Globe and Mail, Thursday, March 4, 2004
  Working from home avoids 'dysfunction' office politics
  
  
• Statistics Canada, February 11, 2003
  Where Canadians Work and How They Get There