Commute times increase in Ottawa-Gatineau as more workers head to the office: StatsCan

Traffic on King Edward Avenue on June 27, 2025. (Natalie van Rooy/ CTV News Ottawa)

The number of workers in Ottawa-Gatineau heading to the office increased in the spring, resulting in longer commute times across the national capital region.

Statistic Canada says 76 per cent of workers in Ottawa-Gatineau worked most of their hours outside of the home in May 2025, up 9.5 per cent from May 2024.

Ottawa-Gatineau saw the largest increase in workers commuting to work out of the 15 largest markets in Canada. However, the national capital region still has the lowest number of people heading to the office for work in all major Canadian cities.

Last fall, the federal government mandated federal workers in the core public service be in the office a minimum of three days a week, while managers must be in the office a minimum of four days a week.

According to Statistics Canada, Ottawa had the lowest proportion of workers who worked most of their hours outside the home at 76 per cent in May, followed by Toronto at 76.1 per cent, Victoria 78.3 per cent and Vancouver 79.2 per cent.

The report shows those mostly working from home accounted for 17.4 per cent of employed people across Canada in May, down from 18.7 per cent in May 2024, “resulting in more commuters on the roads.”

Increasing commute times

More workers returning to the office in Ottawa-Gatineau resulted in longer commute times, according to Statistics Canada.

The average commute time in the Ottawa-Gatineau area was 26.4 minutes in May 2025, up from 26.2 minutes in May 2024 and 24.8 minutes in May 2023.

The average commute time was 34.9 minutes in Toronto and 31.1 minutes in Vancouver.

The number of people using public transit, walking or cycling to work in Ottawa-Gatineau has also increased.

Statistics Canada reports 12.7 per cent of commuters used OC Transpo and STO Gatineau in May 2025, up from 11 per cent in 2024 and 9.1 per cent in 2023. The number of people using active transportation to get to work increased from 7.7 in 2024 to 9.1 per cent in 2025.

Coun. Riley Brockington says Ottawa is seeing more traffic on roads and sidewalks as the federal government and private companies bring employees back to the office, but transit ridership is not increasing.

“You would hope the ridership data over more recent years would have gone up, but it hasn’t. We’re still stuck around a 70 per cent average between our buses and LRT system, pre-COVID,” Brockington told CTV News Ottawa.

“It needs to be 100 per cent pre-COVID, if not higher. We’re stuck in this trough that we can’t get out of. That’s why our revenues have been impacted; that’s why we went through this round of bus service reductions in April of 2025. You would hope to see as more and more people work from the office that would be reflected in public transit numbers. We’re not seeing that in Ottawa.”

Brockington is calling on OC Transpo to present a plan to boost bus service reliability to 85 per cent.

“If you want to attract more people to public transit in Ottawa, you must give them consistent public service every day – bus, LRT and Para Transpo,” Brockington said.

“If you can’t provide a reliable public transit service to the people of Ottawa, they’ll look for other alternatives.”

Data presented to the city’s transit committee in June showed OC Transpo on-time performance for frequent bus routes was 82 per cent in May and 70 per cent for less frequent routes. A total of 97.9 per cent of bus trips were delivered as planned in May.

With files from The Canadian Press