OTTAWA - If the morning commute had a medal for dogged dedication, IBM Corp. employee Anne Hay would be a sterling candidate for the honour.
For the last 18 years she has faithfully beaten a path up and down Ontario's 400 Highway, clocking at least 70 minutes each way to get from her home in Barrie to the IBM offices on the outskirts of Toronto.
That's 12 hours of driving over a regular work week, before any number of potential slowdowns is factored in.
Like most drivers, Hay endures all kinds of familiar delays, from traffic jams, to road rage, construction and nasty winter weather.
"It's just what I do,'' the marketing manager says matter of factly.
"I'm married with two children, we have a beautiful home, family, friends -- it's the way we've chosen to live.''
"I enjoy where I live and I certainly enjoy where I work. Put the two together and I've got to drive to get to each place.''
Hay is like millions of Canadians who warm up their engines each morning and embark on cars, buses or trains for the abhorred tradition of the daily commute.
According to the latest by Statistics Canada, the car is still king in Canada.
The data shows that over the past five years only 216,000 more people, or an uptick of a mere half a percentage point, decided to climb aboard some form of public transit in Canada -- be it the train, bus, streetcar or subway.
Meanwhile, the number of commuters who drove to work slid by one and a half percentage points.
Statistics Canada says that the number of people travelling as passengers in a vehicle rose by nearly one percentage point, suggesting that more people were choosing to carpool.
The findings suggest a mild shift in how workers are electing to get to their jobs. But it also shows that while public transit might be gaining favour among some Canadians, it's not convincing commuters en masse to keep their car in park.
Hay said she's tried using Ontario's provincial GO train commuter service, a popular way to travel into Toronto from surrounding cities, but that it takes much longer to get around once she's at the office.
"Quite often I'd have a meeting downtown (in Toronto) but I'd have to get back to the Markham office,'' she said.
It's "way easier to use your car.''
Her outlook on public transit is echoed by many commuters across the country from major cities to small towns, and is one of the biggest challenges transit operators and environmentalists face in persuading Canadians to leave their cars on the driveway.
Light vehicles -- or cars and vans -- produce about 12 per cent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions.
But critics say many suburban areas have limited or no access to public transit, which doesn't leave people with many alternatives to driving themselves.
On the outskirts of major cities such as Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver the process of transferring from a local bus to the main subway system adds to a commute that some say would take a fraction of the time in a car.
"Every time you add a transfer piece to a trip you're tacking on anywhere from five to 15 minutes,'' said Lorenzo Mele, chairman of the Association for Commuter Transportation of Canada. "That's when our systems fall apart.''
"There's no point in trying to convince somebody to turn a 30-minute car ride to work into an hour and a half journey across the transit system,'' he said.
The selling point of transit becomes even more difficult knowing that more Canadians are travelling farther than they were five years earlier.
The number of people enduring a commute of 30 kilometres or more jumped one percentage point since 2001.
Aside from the difficulty in convincing more riders to hop on board, public transit is also facing serious business challenges.
In February, the Canadian Urban Transit Association published a study which suggests that public transportation will need $40.1 billion by 2012 in order to meet its passenger load.
Even with the current ridership, some major Canadian cities are operating well above capacity, a problem that's further irritated by budget constraints and bus shortages.
The Toronto Transit Commission, the country's largest transit system, has long complained about a lack of government funding. Current rates have done little to solve the overloaded system, which provides 1.4 million rides around the city on subways, buses and street cars each day.
Buses are packed with riders during "rush hour'' and the city's busiest routes sometimes cram more than 80 passengers on a bus designed to move about 54 people at a time. The TTC has been expanding service in anticipation that a new ridership record will be hit this year as Toronto continues to be the country's number 1 centre of growth.
Calgary Transit is facing a similar capacity crisis as its population surges. Last year the transit authority saw ridership increase by more than 1.5 million, a rise of two per cent, on top of an eight per cent surge a year earlier.
Dan Daines, a Vancouver resident who moved to Calgary to work in construction, takes the light-rail train to work every morning.
He said Calgary's transit pales in comparison to the system in place back in his hometown.
"It sucks. It's like being in a sardine can,'' he said while waiting on the C-Train platform. "It's too congested all the time.''
City officials say they have been scurrying to order more trains.
"We've been buying equipment as fast as we can but it's been difficult to catch up,'' said John Hubbell, general manager of transportation at Calgary Transit.
"We're just receiving an order of 40 LRT (light-rail transit) cars and that has improved it considerably, but my guess is a year from now we'll be in the same boat because ridership continues to increase.''
Critics have skewered local officials for expanding Calgary's roads instead of dedicating the money to further enhancing the transit system.
Other major Canadian cities have come under fire from advocacy groups for misdirecting funds or ignoring technological advances.
"The way in which our cities work is not changing very much at all. Our cities continue to approve the suburban sorts of development that are very difficult to serve using public transit,'' said Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, an environmental watchdog.
"We talk a great line and do nothing.''
Between the crammed buses and slower transportation times, the decision to brave traffic jams and icy road conditions seems like a reasonable alternative for some.
However, Hay has found another way around the commute.
Her employer, IBM, has established a program that lets workers connect to conference calls and meetings through remote access off-site. That means Hay can stay in Barrie for at least part of the week.
"I drive in three days a week and the other two I'm able to work from my home office,'' she said.
On a regular week, Hay cuts about two and a half hours of road time from her schedule, and saves herself plenty of stress in the process.
