Commuting Patterns and Places of Work of Canadians, 2006 Census: Portrait of the largest census metropolitan areas in the country's regions

Vancouver

• The number of people whose usual place of work was in the Vancouver census metropolitan area rose from 901,800 to 977,600 between 2001 and 2006, an increase of 8.4%.
• The number of people whose place of work was in the City of Vancouver rose by 6.0% over the past five years, to 331,300 in 2006. In contrast, the increase came to 9.7% in the peripheral municipalities in this CMA.
• In 2006, the municipalities of Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby and Richmond were among the 25 largest in Canada from the point of view of the number of people working there. Of these 25 municipalities, Surrey ranked second in terms of the increase in the number of workers (+17.0%), Burnaby ranked sixteenth (+6.5%), Vancouver ranked eighteenth (+6.0%), and Richmond ranked twenty-third (+3.4%).
• In 2006, the number of people commuting to the municipalities of Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond to work was higher than the number of workers living in these municipalities (+58,400 in Vancouver, +25,800 in Burnaby and +31,300 in Richmond). In contrast, the number of people working in the municipality of Surrey was lower than the number of workers living there (net loss of 47,400 workers).
• The fastest growing peripheral municipalities around Vancouver in terms of the number of people reporting them as their usual place of work were Surrey (+17,300 or +17.0%), Burnaby (+7,000 or +6.5%), Langley (+6,400 or +18.5%) and Coquitlam (+5,800 or +17.2%).
• The median commuting distance for workers living in the Vancouver CMA who worked at a usual place of work was 7.4 kilometres in 2006, compared to 7.6 kilometres in 2001.
• For workers living in the Vancouver CMA in 2006, 67.3% drove to work (compared to 72.2% in 2001) and 7.1% got to work as a passenger in a car (compared to 7.0% in 2001).
• In 2006, 16.5% of commuters living in the Vancouver CMA used public transit (compared to 11.5% in 2001), 6.3% walked (6.5% in 2001), 1.7% cycled (1.9% in 2001) and 1.1% used another mode of transportation (1.0% in 2001).
• In 2006, 42.9% of workers whose usual place of work was in the City of Vancouver used a sustainable mode of transportation to get there, i.e., public transit, walking or cycling (compared to 35.7% in 2001¹). The corresponding proportions were 12.2% for those commuting to Surrey (9.5% in 2001), 13.1% for those commuting to Richmond (9.0% in 2001) and 22.7% for those commuting to Burnaby (16.3% in 2001).

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