Cindy Smith has spent years travelling between her job in downtown Toronto and her home in Courtice, about 60-km away, by public transit.

“It’s the only way for me to get down here,” she said. “I wouldn’t drive, it would be insane.”

Today, the transit blogger is one of almost 400,000 women who primarily commute by transit in the Greater Toronto Area, and together, account for 57.8 per cent of transit commuters in the GTA, according to new census data released Wednesday.

Though Smith says she largely commutes by GO Train to save time, experts say gender inequality could help explain the larger trend — more women than men are travelling to and from work on transit.

“I think it reflects larger trends of inequality around gender,” said Anna Kramer, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto who studies social equity issues in transportation and land use planning.

“Generally, women have lower incomes on average and so they’re obviously more price sensitive to transportation costs, along with other costs,” she explained.

Other factors could include hierarchical dynamics in families.

“Especially in families with one car you may see that men will get the car more often or have primary access to the car,” Kramer said.

At the same time, there is increasing poverty in the suburbs — communities built for the car.

“It might make the commute quite a lot more difficult for women in these areas,” she said, adding that women tend to make a lot more stops along their commutes than men to drop off kids or pick up groceries.

It’s a fairly consistent trend across the region: more women than men are commuting to work on public transit, while more men than women are getting to work by car, truck, or van.

In Toronto, 58.5 per cent of the people who commute by public transit are women and 41.5 per cent are men. While 58.4 per cent of people who commute by car, truck, or van are men and 41.6 per cent are women, census data shows.

Across the province 57.6 per cent of commuters who travel by public transit are women and 42.4 per cent are men. While 53.6 per cent of those who commute by car, truck or van are men and 46.4 per cent are women.

Smith can make it from her door to work in about an hour and 20 minutes, she said, adding “there’s no way I could do it in an hour and 20 during rush hour from my house.”

Her commute used to be longer — but she’s recently made a shift from her car-free life to save on time.

“It became harder and harder to rely on bus service in my suburb of Courtice because it’s a very car centric community so they kept cutting back service,” she said.

Now, she takes a car to the GO Station in Oshawa instead of a bus, saving herself 20 minutes, before continuing on to Toronto.

Still, she’s spending hours on transit each week, and in that time, she’s seen some things: someone brushing their teeth using two water bottles, people plucking their eyebrows or doing their makeup, people getting dressed and undressed, even people clipping their nails.

Almost eight years ago, she decided to entertain with her tales from the train, and started a website: You. Me. Ride This Crazy Train.

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Today about 450 people read the site a week, she said, adding that most of her readers seem to be women.

To address the larger issues of inequality and lessen the burden on women Kramer said there are things that can be done within transportation planning — alongside efforts to increase equality, ensure more equitable sharing of household duties, and achieve equal pay — including increasing the transfer period.

In Toronto that initiative won support of the TTC board this week and will go before City Council next week for final approval.

More extensive networks and more frequent service would also help, she added.

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