Four out of Five Commuters Drive to Work

The rest of us have to deal with the mysterious scents, inconsistent schedules, and offputting interactions with strangers on public transit.

Oh, hey there, Statistics Canada, what sort of neat numbers do you have for us today? What's that? You say eight out of 10 Canadians drive to work? And that their commute is on average 24 minutes? And that the vast majority of people who drive to work never take public transit because they think it's inefficient? Well, they're right, as StatsCan also found that in Canada's six major cities (the only places that matter, amiright?), driving was, on average, about 17 minutes faster for getting to and from work than taking public transit. Granted, you can't read a book, or text a friend, or hit on strangers in a car, so there are some benefits associated with taking the “people's chariot” to work (although only 12 per cent of all Canadians do so). Overall, people are pretty content with their commute times, unless they're part of the unfortunate subset of commuters who spend more than 45 minutes on public transit each way. Can you blame them? If a tenth of your waking hours were spent on a bus, you'd be pretty peeved, too.