Transportation trends in Ottawa (Part 2)
Where are people going?
Earlier this month Ottawa transportation planners released the long-awaited results of the 2022 Origin-Destination study, and it’s full of fascinating info about how transportation patterns are changing in Ottawa post-pandemic.
I’m diving in to the new reports available at engage.ottawa.ca in four parts:
Part 2: Where to? (this post)
If you like charts and stats about travel and mobility, this series is for you.
More local trips
As I wrote in Part 1, Ottawa’s population grew 15% from 2011 to 2021, but the number of daily trips has actually decreased by about 0.7% from 2.55-million to 2.54-million in roughly the same timeframe. A remarkable drop, caused largely by more working-from-home.1 But there’s more behind those numbers that point towards broader changes in how we’re moving around our city.
Here are some highlights from the report.
The heat map above illustrates where people are going by mapping destination areas (excluding trips home).
Less than half of Ottawa’s population lives inside the Greenbelt, and yet 64% of all trips end at destinations inside the Greenbelt.
I tried to guess at what destinations attract the most trips in Kanata-Stittsville. The labels on this map are my educated guesses.
The chart above illustrates where people are coming and going to. There’s a lot going on here so take a few moments to absorb what it’s conveying. Follow the strands from one district to another. Compare the number of trips leaving against trips arriving. To me, it confirms a lot of what I would assume to be true but it’s interesting to see the data plotted like this.
More travel within suburbs?
About half of all trips start and end in the same area. Since 2011, we’ve seen a shift towards more “internal” trips within specific areas of the city.
The report notes: “…many areas of the city, including suburbs and Barrhaven in particular, increasingly operate as complete communities with many services and amenities located in the community, in line with the City’s Official Plan objectives. It may also reflect the reduction in work trips that has occurred, which tend to involve longer distances.”
41% of trips started and ended inside the Greenbelt in 2022, up from 34% in 2011.
67% of trips originating in the suburbs were internal in 2022, up from 59% of trips in 2011.
Internal trips by area: Orleans (72%); Kanata-Stittsville (70%); Barrhaven (64%); South Gloucester/Leitrim/Riverside South/Findlay Creek (41%). To me that reflects the degree to which each of these areas has more or fewer jobs, retail, schools, and services. Ideally, we’ll see these rates continue to trend higher in the coming years.
Here’s a table that further breaks down the origin and destination of trips in 2022. The numbers along the top correspond to the areas listed along the left. Some examples to help decipher it:
There were 314,000 total trips originating in Kanata/Stittsville (area 10).
There were 3,300 trips originating in Kanata/Stittsville (10) and arriving in Ottawa Centre (1)
There were 600 trips originating in Kanata/Stittsville (10) and arriving in South Gloucester/Leitrim (12).
There were 220,200 trips originating in Kanata/Stittsville (area 10) and staying internal to the area.
There were 17,900 trips going from Kanata Stittsville (10) to the Bayshore/Cedarview (9) area. (Probably a mix of shopping and employment?)
There were 21,800 trips going from Kanata/Stittsville (10) to the Rural (14) area.
Shorter trips
The distance we’re travelling is getting smaller compared to 2011. No doubt that’s partly due to fewer lengthy work commutes.
Median trip distance decreased from 4.4 km in 2011 to 3.4 km in 2022.
80% of trips in 2022 were under 10.3 kilometres, a decrease of 1.5 km compared to 2011. (10.3-kilometres is a great distance for cycling, as long as there is safe infrastructure to ride on.)
26% of automobile driver trips and 32% of automobile passenger trips (almost 460,000 daily trips) are less than 2.1km. The report says that’s an opportunity to convert a significant number of automobile trips to active modes, like walking, cycling, e-scooter, etc. (I wonder how many of those short trips are to local schools? And what impact better cycling and pedestrian infrastructure near schools would have on encouraging fewer drives to school?)
Visualizing major travel flows
This map shows morning commutes by car. The arrows show movement between districts, and the dots show trips that stay within a district.
This map shows the same morning commute volumes, but by transit.
Combined, these maps help illustrate that where you go – and how you get there –varies greatly depending on where you live. For example, there are very few commuters leaving the core by car. And there’s quite a bit of car traffic moving between “Inside Greenbelt West ←→ Inside Greenbelt East” (55,000 trips), but very little transit ridership (11,000 trips) directly between these two zones.
The report notes: “These results suggest an opportunity to focus transit investments in areas that are less well-served by transit to increase ridership.” Many of these trips are currently going east←→west along roads like Carling, Baseline, Hunt Club, and the Queensway.
Next in this series
Next time will be a short post about trends in car ownership. (Believe it or not, some households in the suburbs have fewer than two cars!)
Get involved
The City has launched another round of consultation for the Transportation Master Plan. Residents are invited to provide input on the transportation challenges they experience when travelling by car or transit, as well as their transportation investment priorities. Fill out the surveys before August 30, and sign up for updates at https://engage.ottawa.ca/transportation-master-plan
I heard from a few of you who wonder if the data in this report is really relevant, since it was based on a 2022 study and many more people have returned to in-person work since then. The City used the data from this study as one of many inputs into something called the TRANS model, used by agencies in the National Capital Region to estimate existing and future travel patterns. “Although the model uses information from 2022, the modelling process has been specially updated and refined to reflect changes in commuting patterns since that time, as well as potential future changes, recognizing that travel behaviour is continuing to evolve,” according to the report. The TRANS model incorporates information from the City of Ottawa, la Ville de Gatineau, OC Transpo, la Société de transport de l’Outaouais, Ontario Ministry of Transportation, le Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable du Québec, and the National Capital Commission.
Really interesting analysis and glad to see so much effort getting into evidence based decision making. I'm curious, have these numbers been adjusted for participation levels in each of the different areas?