Public transit use among immigrants
Andrew Heisz and Grant Schellenberg,
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, No. 224
Canadian Journal of Urban Research, Volume 13, Issue 1
Context
The dramatic shift in population composition towards recent immigrants
in Canada 's largest cities has important implications for the provision
of many public services. This paper examines the importance of increased
immigration for the provision of public transit.
Objectives
The paper compares the use of public transit to compute to work by
immigrants and the Canadian born, and examines whether this difference
remains after controlling for demographic and geographic characteristics,
or diminishes with the length of residence in Canada .
Findings
The propensity to use public transit to commute to work is far higher
among recent immigrants than Canadian-born persons and that this difference
remains when gender, age, income, distance to work, and residential
distance from the city centre are taken into account. One implication
is that population growth based on immigration will place greater demands
on public transit systems than growth based on natural increase.
The evidence also indicates that immigrants who have been in Canada
for more than 20 years typically use public transit to commute to work
at the same level as Canadian-born persons. This suggests that either
immigrant transit use "integrates" towards the level of the Canadian-born
population, and/or that newer cohorts of immigrants have a higher likelihood
to use public transit than past cohorts. The results suggest that both
integration and cohort effects are important.
Projections for future public transit needs could take into account
that the urban population is not only growing, but is also compositionally
shifting towards a high-usage group. Immigrants have a high-usage rate
no matter how far away they live from the downtown core. Unlike earlier
cohorts who initially settled in the downtown areas of CMAs, many immigrants
in the 1980s and 1990s have settled directly in suburban areas.
A shift in the geographic concentration of immigrants from urban core
to outlying areas has implications for the location of public transit
services, especially in CMAs with centralized transit systems.
Data source: Census 1995-2000.
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