It’s not your imagination: commute times in the Greater Toronto Area are getting worse.

According to 2016 long-form census data released Wednesday by Statistics Canada, it took GTA residents an average of 1 minute and 12 seconds longer to get to work last year than it did in 2011.

Over that time the region’s residents saw their average one-way commute time increase by about 3.7 per cent, from 32 minutes and 36 seconds to 33 minutes and 48 seconds.

City of Toronto residents saw a smaller increase than their neighbours in the rest of the GTA, with their trips increasing by about 42 seconds, from 33 minutes and 30 seconds to 34 minutes and 12 seconds.

It is taking the region’s commuters more time to get to work despite the fact that the average distance between their homes and places of business actually decreased slightly between 2006 and 2016, falling from 14.8 kilometres to 14.6 kilometres.

GTA residents take significantly longer to get to work than the national average, which was 26 minutes and 12 seconds last year.

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The figures capture all commuters, regardless of what mode of transportation they use to get to work.

Despite the longer commute times Jason Gilmore, chief of labour statistics at Statistics Canada, said there has been a small shift towards more people living closer to where they work. He said since 2011 there has been a 0.5 percentage point rise in GTA commutes shorter than 3 kilometres.

“In other words, some people might be shifting the relationship of where they live and where they work to shorten that distance,” he said.

Gilmore said it’s unclear whether some people are moving closer to where they work, or taking jobs closer to their homes.

Public transit users were more likely to have longer commutes than those who travel by other modes. In the GTA, 59.3 per cent of public transit users experienced commute times of 45 minutes or more. The number was 23.2 per cent for drivers who don’t carry passengers, and just 7.3 per cent for cyclists.

Of the GTA municipalities reflected in the census, Ajax had the highest commute times in 2016, with the average resident spending almost 39 minutes each day to get to work. Burlington residents spent the least amount of time getting to their jobs, at just under 29 minutes.

Measured by distance, residents of Brock had the furthest to travel to work, at an average of 33.8 kilometres. City of Toronto residents had the shortest average distance, at 10.6 kilometres.

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Across the region, the number of commuters who are spending at least an hour to get to work is on the rise, with 17.3 per cent reporting their one-way commute times at 60 minutes or more. The group grew by 1.4 percentage points between 2011 and 2016.

That coincided with a drop of 1.2 percentage points in the number of residents with the shortest commutes, which were defined as less than 15 minutes.

There didn’t appear to be strong correlation between an individuals’ income and their commute time, suggesting wealthier GTA residents aren’t leveraging their higher earnings to lessen the burden of commuting.

The median household income for people whose commutes lasted more than an hour was $112,211. Those who spent less than 15 minutes commuting reported median incomes of $106,622.

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