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Life is a highway…unless you’re in Toronto, where life is a slow crawl to the office.
Where in the world? Traffic is so bad that a majority of the city’s workers are trying to avoid going into the office, according to a survey of 1,000 workers by the Toronto Region Board of Trade and Ipsos.
The survey found that 64% of workers are “reluctant” to travel to the office because of the traffic, and 59% said the long commutes hurt their productivity. The report suggested that the traffic may contribute to higher absenteeism and lower office attendance and workforce participation.
The city has the worst traffic in North America, according to data from TomTom, a location technology company, and the public transit system is “underbuilt and under-resourced,” Giles Gherson, CEO of the Board of Trade, told Bloomberg.
The traffic woes are hurting the city’s employers, who would prefer their workers to be in the office the majority of the time, Gherson said.
“What’s held them back—because they want to keep their employees, obviously—is they’re very well aware of the fact that their employees are saying: ‘My commute has become intolerable,’” he said.
Satellite view. Even workers who drive to work in cities with more robust public transit systems like New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco lose more than 70 hours a year to rush-hour traffic.
While employers may not be able to fix the congestion, they can coordinate schemes like “park-and-ride” options for employees, HR Brew previously reported.
Teleportation can’t be invented fast enough.