Commuting distance

Part A - Short definition:

Not applicable

Part B - Detailed definition:

Refers to the straight-line distance, in kilometres, between the respondent's residence and his or her usual workplace location.

Reported in:

2011

Reported for:

Population aged 15 years and over in private households, who worked at some time since January 1, 2010, and who reported having a usual place of work. The variable usually relates to the individual's job held during the week of Sunday, May 1 to Saturday, May 7, 2011. However, if the person did not work during that week but had worked at some time since January 1, 2010, the information relates to the job held longest during that period.

Early enumeration was conducted in remote, isolated parts of the provinces and territories in February, March and April 2011. When enumeration has taken place before May 2011, the reference date used is the date on which the household was enumerated.

Question number(s):

Derived variable: Question 46

Responses:

Not applicable

Remarks:

Workplace locations are coded to a geographic point location. This geographic point location is a block-face, dissemination block, dissemination area or census subdivision representative point. Commuting distance is calculated as the straight-line distance between the residential block representative point and the workplace location representative point. In most cases, this underestimates the distance travelled to work because workers seldom have a route that minimizes the distance they travel (such as a straight line) between their home and workplace.

For persons who work outside the areas covered by census metropolitan areas or census agglomerations, the workplace location is coded to a single representative point for the census subdivision of work. This can affect the calculated commuting distance, particularly when the census subdivision of work has a large area. These representative points may change from survey to survey, so users should be cautious when comparing commuting distances between surveys.