BCBusiness

iNsights wEst sUrvEy, March 4 to 10, 2016 B ut he feels like he doesn't have a choice. F i r s t , T r a n sL i n k eliminated the B-line bus along Granville when the Canada Line opened and transformed his 10-minute commute to Richmond into a 40-minute, two-transfer one. Then, when he and his wife decided to buy a home, a mod- est townhouse in South Surrey was all they could a'ord. That new location made transit even more unrealistic. Chmelik is not an outlier. As the people born between 1980 and 2000 move into their household-forming, baby- having years, those who study how cities work are ›oating the idea that North America may have reached "peak millennial." American demographer Dowell Myers has generated a little dust storm of media coverage the last few months with that very idea, warning that the members of this group—renowned for their love of urban living, craft brew- eries and alternative modes of transport—may undergo a sig- nižicant shift in behaviour as they get older. That could have a direct impact on commuting—a com- plex part of contemporary city life that a'ects everything from the economy to the environment to our emotional well-being. The economic factor is critical in Van- couver, which has to contend with an exceptionally challeng- ing housing market. "If Vancou- ver wants to grow economically despite ballooning house prices, higher-density living will require more public transit—more capacity in Vancouver, more expansion geographically into suburban areas," says Werner Antweiler, a UBC business profes- sor whose research focuses on the connections between transit and the economy. "With denser public transit systems, workers gain time, which in turn can be used to produce more output at work and provide more services at home." Cities whose transportation arteries are clogged are heart attacks in the making, so it mat- ters a lot whether millennials make a massive switch from transit to cars—or not. That's just one of the factors that local transportation and city planners are assessing as they try to •gure out how to shape future com- muting. If Vancouver is really going to see a million more peo- ple by 2040—and a million more, then a million more, in future decades—it's important to make sure the blood is ›owing easily in those arteries. That means calculating in •ne detail which combination of pushes and pulls will encourage people to alter the ways they move around. 38 BCBusiness JUNE 2016 H OW YO U U S UALLY GET TO WO R K O N WE E KDAYS drive public transit bike walk don't work weekdays THE BCB COMMUTING SURVEY How do we get to work—and how would we like to get to work? What do we like most and least about our commutes? And compared to •ve years ago, are things getting better or worse? Answers to these questions are in the following pages (and at bcbusiness.ca). For more on the methodolo¤y of our BCB/Insights West survey, read here* B.C. 9% 3% 19% 43% 26% Fraser Valley 43% 46% 3% 9% southern B.C. (Interior) 40% 46% 4% 2% 9% VanCouVer Island 41% 31% 15% 2% 13% northern B.C. 79% 24% * results of the BCBusiness/insights west survey are based on an online study conducted from march 4 to march 10, 2016, among 802 adult residents of british columbia. the data has been statistically weighted according to canadian cen- sus figures for age, gender and region. the margin of error—which measures sample variability—is +/ - 3.5 percentage points. any apparent discrepancies in totals are due to rounding and small sizes in local sub-samples.

• Cover