Metro Vancouver Commuting Patterns
Prompted by a post on the excellent Fraseropolis blog that discussed how much more quickly job growth is occurring in Metro Vancouver’s suburban areas rather than Vancouver itself, I was curious about the commuting patterns of those living on the eastern side of the region.
The point of the Fraseropolis post is that Metro Vancouver is not defined by a single regional core, but by an increasingly widespread array of large employment centres throughout the region. This affects all kinds of things, including transportation planning.
(If you’re not familiar with the geography of Metro Vancouver, see the map below. I’m writing mainly today about the communities on the eastern side of the region. The traditional regional centre is Vancouver on the western edge.)
Source: Metro Vancouver Regional Growth Strategy
The chart below shows the place of work for all employed residents of Maple Ridge (all statistics in this post are from the 2006 Census, which is the most recent available for this data set). As of 2006, just over one-third of Maple Ridge residents worked in their home community while only 8% had a regular place of work in Vancouver. The most popular alternative destinations were other nearby suburbs – Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows and Surrey – along with Burnaby, which is part of the “inner core” of the region.
*As an aside, I’m puzzled as to why there were 45 Maple Ridge residents working in Mascouche, Quebec (a suburb of Montreal). Other than having an allegedly corrupt Mayor, I don’t really know anything about Mascouche and what would draw employees from across the country. The things you find in the Census…..
Next to Maple Ridge is Pitt Meadows, which has a much smaller population base and significantly fewer local employment opportunities. Consequently only 18% of employed Pitt Meadows residents worked in Pitt Meadows, followed by Maple Ridge at 15% and Vancouver at 14%. Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Burnaby were also popular work locations.
One interesting point with both Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows was that very little commuting went south of the Fraser River. Surrey attracted 3% of Maple Ridge residents but did not rank among the top 7 destinations for Pitt Meadows residents. Since 2006 the new Golden Ears Bridge opened to link the Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows area to Surrey, so these percentages will likely increase when the 2011 Census results are available.
The next community to the west is Port Coquitlam. While 22% of employed residents worked in Port Coquitlam, the shorter distance to Vancouver likely helps to explain the higher percentage who commuted there (15%). Surrey and Richmond also show up in the top 7 destinations.
Turning south of the Fraser River, Surrey is the largest municipality in the region other than Vancouver and consistently adds more people every year than any other community in BC. Thirty-eight percent of employed Surrey residents worked in Surrey while Vancouver again ranked 2nd as the destination for 10% of residents. The next four – Delta, Richmond, Burnaby and Langley Township – are all large municipalities reasonably close to Surrey by highway.
Finally, Langley Township is another large and fast-growing municipality on the eastern edge of the region south of the Fraser River. Thirty-seven percent of its residents stayed in their home community to work while 16% went next door to Surrey and 10% worked in Langley City. With the added distance, only 5% of employed residents commuted to Vancouver.
These figures show that even though a relatively modest percentage of residents in Metro Vancouver’s eastern municipalities are commuting to Vancouver, it still ranks in the top 2-4 of employment destinations for each community. And in absolute numbers it’s still a pretty significant number of commuters (more than 31,000 in the five communities profiled above). But the overriding conclusion is just what was suggested in Fraseropolis – that people really are going all over the place to get to work.
For comparison purposes, here is the commuting breakdown for Vancouver residents. It shows a much higher percentage are employed in their home community, but still more than 120,000 Vancouver residents either commute outside the city or have no fixed place of work.
