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Metro Vancouver’s top transit neighbourhoods: Not the West End

August 15th, 2011 · 23 Comments

Love this kind of stats analysis that tells us how the city really works. Chad Skelton at the Vancouver Sun looked at transit use, broken down by census tract, to find out which neighbourhoods use transit the most.

I’m sure that he, like all of us, can hardly wait til 2011 numbers start coming out to give us new info. (But I suspect it won’t be for at least a year yet. I just filled out my long-form census a couple of weeks ago and I’m fairly certain others are behind me. Then they have to crunch all those numbers and decipher all the conflicting answers and politely badger the laggards to get their forms in.)

Categories: Uncategorized

  • IanS

    I would imagine that the downtown ares have a lower transit use because people walk to work.

  • gmgw

    The West End has long been absurdly over-serviced by transit, especially during rush hours. It’s not uncomon to see two or three Davie buses in a row pass by on Granville, with the latter two being all but empty. The situation used to be the same with the Robson buses– and may still be; but I don’t even know what route they follow through downtown these days (via Burrard??).

    Meanwhile buses on the Granville Corridor, as well as on the perpetually under-serviced 4th/Dunbar routes, are jammed to the doors during rush hours, so much so that drivers are forced to routinely pass people waiting at stops. This has been a fact of life for riders on these routes for so long that I think they have adopted an air of fatalism, as in: Things haven’t improved in twenty years, so why expect them to change now?

    In any case, I think that any able-bodied person worth his/her salt who lives in the West End and works downtown should be commuting via shank’s mare (or via bicycle, if you prefer). I lived west of Denman for seven years back in the 70s/80s and it never occurred to me to take to the bus from/to downtown. Mind you, I used to run 50K a week in those days, back when I had fully functional knees… ah, youth. So fleeting. But given the paltry distances involved, I repeat my argument that the West End is over-serviced by transit. And no, I don’t expect that to change.
    gmgw

  • CTS

    I’d add in walk to work and see how that changes things, as an unusually high number (compared to other cities) of downtown workers walk

  • Tiktaalik

    @1 Yeah I think that makes sense. The downtown core has lower bike commuting numbers than many other Vancouver neighbourhoods as well, likely for the same reason.

    http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/vanmap/5241714/story.html

    You can see clearly that transit ridership areas are along where the rapid transit Skytrain and Canada Lines are. Folks love their trains.

    All of these maps are super interesting.

  • spartikus

    I would imagine that the downtown ares have a lower transit use because people walk to work.

    Yep. (Chad Skelton has a map for that too).

  • jesse

    The ridership on the west side is decidedly lacking, given UBC students who live off-campus. It’s too obvious to me that improving ridership on the west side should be the region’s goal, at least so says Cartesian geometry.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    Something’s off. It’s either me not getting it, or some type of misinterpretation.

    On the map spartikus links to, the top 5 walking neighbourhoods are in the West End. Yet overlayed on the map for people who work close to home, the top 5 neighbourhoods only show three in the West End?

    Presumably people who walk to work, work closest to their home, no?

    It will be interesting to see what the new stats show as we’ve had a bit of a socio-economic sea change since 2006.

    Frances or anyone, any idea when we will have new figures to look at from the recent census?

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    Let’s try that link above again:

    map for people who work close to home

  • spartikus

    Frances or anyone, any idea when we will have new figures to look at from the recent census?

    It’s scheduled for February 2012

  • Bobbie Bees

    I live four blocks away from work. It takes me 10 minutes to walk either way. I live across the street from the seawall. I’m 11 blocks away from Downtown (Robson and Granville). If I want to go see a movie at Tinseltown I either hoof it or ride my bike. I rarely ride downtown as the extra few minutes isn’t worth the hassle of putting up with over-stressed car drivers and a lack of secure bike parking at my destination.
    When I go figure skating at Kits or Britannia I will ride. And generally if I’m going anywhere really past Main Street or West 4th I’ll ride. Other than that I walk.
    I did live with a room mate not too long ago who would actually drive from the apartment we shared 6 blocks to Pacific Centre and then bitch and moan about traffic and parking and how I wasn’t pulling my fair share becuase I wasn’t paying insurance, or gas taxes. Blah, blah, blah….

  • Bobbie Bees

    Oh, and GMGW, the #5 Robson bus and the #6 Davie bus are one in the same.The #5 Robson Leaves Davie and Denman and heads downtown to Pender and Homer where it turns around and heads back to Davie and Denman still as the #5. Once at Davie and Denman it changes into the #6 Davie and heads along Davie to Granville. It then turns down Granville to Cordova where it then heads up Richards back to Davie. It then heads to Davie and Denman where it becomes the #5 Robson again. It repeats this cycle over and over.

  • A Dave

    I compared a few downtown numbers for a report a little while ago. What jumped out at me was that a whopping 58% of Yaletown/Beach Ave residents drove automobiles to work (30% walk/bike), and 55% of False Creek South residents drove (23% walk/bike).

    Compare that to only 22% of Gastown/Chinatown residents driving to work (33% walk/bike; 43% transit), or 36% for the Denman area (45% walk/ bike).

    This data suggests to me that commuting mode is also partly based on socio-economics. Also, single family residential neighbourhoods generally have much higher numbers of drivers on the West Side vs. the East Side, where transit is more often used (ie. Victoria-Hastings has 30% transit commuters vs. Alma-10th with only 15% transit).

    But you’re right TOTB, there’s been a fair bit of change since 2006, with new bike lanes and the Canada Line. And sooner or later, soaring gas prices are going to really change things…

  • Eric

    I’m surprised that Chad got permission to use Statistics Canada’s census tracts and census data in an interactive map. I’ve found that mapping data in this format often violates usage agreements you have to sign with Statistics Canada in order to use their data.
    This problem doesn’t exist in the US where mapping census data is free and easy to do. You also don’t have to pay to gain access to most census data. Compare this to Canada and it really limits what map makers can create and share with the public, and thus limits the opportunities for research, discussion and learning via mapping.

  • Shane

    Well – the map showing % of folks working close to home shows you who should pay higher property taxes to pay for the transportation network.

  • Michelle

    Apropos, re. Downtown…WestEnd we live in Vancouver (westside) and will have a big Birthday party on Saturday. Usually we were doing a lunch @ a downtown restaurant, followed by a Seawall walk and photo op, later in the evening we would go somewhere on Denman for a snack , cake and coffee. I am talking about a 20+ party here. Not anymore. The Parking hassle that Vision Vancouver have created in downtown, the way they are treating its citizens and the fact that none of us will vote for this group of clowns, made the choice real easy for us. We’ll be going to the Spanish Banks/ 4th and on Broadway later on. When the Westenders will realise one day that business are relocating outside their area…that’s why. Ta da

  • Michelle

    One more thing. Feels good doing it on4th/ Broadway. Who knows when this is going to be f#$%ed up by Vision, they still have a few months to screw that one up, right?

  • Bobbie Bees

    Michelle, what the heck are you talking about?
    What feels good? As Faith No More once asked, “What is IT” and why are you doing “it”?

  • Bobbie Bees

    Shane, I’m all in favour if introducing distance based charges for motorists.
    Fit a special meter into the vehicle and charge drivers three or four dollars per kilometre.

  • gmgw

    @Michelle #15:
    “Why don’t we do it/in the road…”
    gmgw

  • Bill McCreery

    It’s also interesting to look at the higher transit ridership vis a vis densities, eg: Marpole, Kerridsale, etc., even Mt Pleasant, where there are concentrations of higher density apartments. Some of these areas are not on a transit line or even a decent bus service.

  • Bill Lee

    The Chad Skelton , Vancouver Sun maps were more than biking.
    See his blog, twitter and external links to Chicago Tribune and other sites for census related scraping.
    Still, until you know the individual Census Tracts, it should only be an impression.

    And curse Industry Minister Tony Clement for making the 2011 Long Household Form a farce, a non-reliable data set for the next ten years. Idiot!

    See all Chad Skelton’s themes. [ Subject and their intriguing headline ]
    http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro-mapped/index.html

    Metro Vancouver Mapped Metrotown the most transit-friendly neighbourhood in the region

    Walk to Work
    About 40 per cent of West End residents walk to work

    Car commuting
    Langley neighbourhood has highest rate of commuting by car

    University
    Whalley neighbourhood has fewest university degrees per capita

    High school
    Surrey neighbourhood has most high-school dropouts

    Babies
    Surrey neighbourhood has most babies per capita

    Young Children
    West End has fewest young children in Metro Vancouver

    Tweens
    Fraser Heights neighbourhood has most tweens
    A neighbourhood in Surrey’s Fraser Heights has more “tweens” per…

    Teenagers
    Neighbourhood in Surrey’s Fraser Heights has most teenagers per capita

    Seniors
    White Rock neighbourhood has most seniors per capita

    Income
    Rosemary Heights in Surrey is richest place in Metro Vancouver

    Immigrants
    In one Richmond neighbourhood, 80 per cent of residents are immigrants

    Speak English
    More than a third of Chinatown residents can’t speak English

    Home size
    North shore, Surrey have region’s biggest homes

    Renters
    Downtown Eastside has most renters

    Average Rent
    West Vancouver has Metro’s priciest rents

    Apartments
    In some suburban neighbourhoods, apartments as common as in West End

    Work/Life
    Port Moody residents least likely to work close to home

    Single Parents
    Single parents most common in suburban centres and aboriginal reserves

    Home Values
    Shaughnessy homes ten times as expensive as those in Guildford

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    University
    Whalley neighbourhood has fewest university degrees per capita

    Coincidentally, this map of university degrees shows an east west divide of Vancouver along Main St. that also correlates generally to the snap shot from a few years back of real estate values.

  • Norman

    The West End deosn’t really have that much bus service. Not in terms of frequency, but routes. North-South there’s Denman, then all the way to Burrard. After that, there’s Howe, Hornby, Granville, Seymour, Richards. East-West, there’s nothing between Davie and Robson, is there? You can’t take a bus that isn’t there. After 6:00PM you will wait a long time between buses on Davie.