Every five years, the Greater Golden Horseshoe Area (of southern Ontario) conducts something called a Transportation Tomorrow Survey. And I am told that it is the most comprehensive travel survey conducted anywhere in the world. So let's look at some of the data. The last survey was completed in 2022 and a mapping of the data was prepared by the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.

Population density:

Percentage of trips by walking:

Percentage of trips by bicycle:

Percentage of trips by public transit:

Percentage of trips by car:

Percentage of residents with a driver's license:

Percentage of households without a car:

Average trips by distance:

Once again, these maps remind us that the starkest contrast is between active and non-active forms of mobility. In other words, we have a central core where many, and sometimes most people (>50%) walk to where they need to go, and then there's absolutely everywhere else in the region where most people drive (>50%) and, in some cases, where people drive almost exclusively (>90%). Public transit ridership is more dispersed, but it's really only dominant in Toronto, and not in any of the suburbs.

Perhaps the only reasonably uniform finding is that average trip distances tend to be relatively short (<10 km) no matter where you live.

Maps from the School of Cities at the University of Toronto; cover photo by Juan Rojas on Unsplash