Map of the Week: Car ownership

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Map: Cars as a percentage of households

These maps looks at cars as a percentage of households from the 2006 census.

The map shows a large area of low car ownership stretching from about Jane and Weston Road southeast along the Danforth to Victoria Park. The Yonge St. high-income corridor has higher rates:

This map of the 20 highest census tracts (of about 1,000) for car ownership is not all that surprising. Clusters in Newmarket, Markham and north Oakville account for most of them.

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However, this map of the 20 lowest census tracts wasn't exactly what I expected. One tract is in northeast Scarborough, at Morningside and Ellesmere. Another is at Jane and Weston Rd. Several cluster roughly along St. Clair from Scarlett Rd. to Old Weston Rd. Clearly this map has at least as much to do with income as anything else - not all of these areas have very good transit connections, though some do. Here we see the 1000m subway radius map superimposed on the car map. The neighbourhoods along the Bloor-Danforth line do have much lower car ownership, at least between Vic Park and the Humber, but this is less true of the YUS line, especially north of Lawrence.

A few tracts have household car ownership rates over 80% despite being within 1000 metres of a subway station: Rosedale, the part of Forest Hill west of Avenue Rd. and St. Clair, Lawrence Park, York Mills and the Kingsway. So the income-to-car-ownership relationship goes both ways.