How can taking public transit reduce congestion? Viral Toronto GIF shows you

Hopping onboard a bus or a subway to get to work may not seem like an ideal way to start your morning commute but an animated image showing the benefits of public transit may change your mind.

Posted earlier this month by Tumblr user "Peter from Texas", the graphics interchange format, or GIF, illustrates just how much congestion is caused as a result of commuters who drive separate cars.

The GIF, which appears to be a combination of photographs taken of a street in downtown Toronto, was originally posted to user-content driven website Reddit on Nov. 3. The GIF has since received 2,800 "up" votes.

In the first of the series of flashing images, a group of commuters pretending to be seated in a streetcar are seen sitting on a street. Next, an image of a streetcar is seen where the group was sitting. The street is completely empty except for the lone streetcar.

In the next set of images, the individual commuters are seen sitting in their own cars and the street is now jam-packed with vehicles.

The photograph is similar to the sights of many Toronto streets during rush hour, where bumper-to-bumper traffic is estimated to cost the city billions annually.

According to a Metrolinx report, congestion is estimated to cost the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas approximately $6 billion per year.

That figure includes costs from travel delays, vehicle expenses and environmental costs that amount to $3.3 billion annually. The remainder of the congestion estimate is based on the loss of productive time.