The average Canadian spends the equivalent of nearly 12 days travelling to work and returning home, according to results from a Statistics Canada study on commuting released Wednesday.

According to the government agency, Canadians spent an average of 63 minutes a day, or what amounted to nearly 275 hours, making the round trip from their home to their workplace in 2005.

The average duration marked a sharp increase in commuting time from previous years. In contrast, Canadians were spending 54 minutes on their daily commute in 1992, which had risen to 59 minutes by 1998.

The StatsCan report, which is based on a 260-day work year, found that average times were markedly higher in 2005 than in 1992 in five of Canada's six largest urban areas.

The longest commute was in Toronto, where workers travelled an average of 79 minutes for a round trip, which is equal to roughly 340 hours or two whole weeks.

These long hours on the road prompted John Cameron to do something about his daily three hour commute from Barrie, Ont., to Toronto and back.

Cameron co-founded SuiteWorks, a company geared to find ways for workers to avoid commuting.

SuiteWorks is a large office facility in the south of Barrie, Ont., -- a city that boasts more than 30,000 Toronto commuters.

"We've assembled office space, meeting rooms, the technology and all of the business services that will allow employees to work close to home without having to travel to the corporate office on a daily basis," Cameron told Canada AM Thursday.

While the commute to Toronto is still the longest, other cities are catching up.

The increases in time were particularly significant for commuters in Calgary and Montreal.

In Calgary, the round trip last year took about 66 minutes, up from 52 minutes in 1992.

In 1992, only 36 per cent of workers spent an hour or more getting to and from their workplace. By 2005, that proportion had risen to 57 per cent.

In a little more than a decade, Calgary's population explosion has put 190,000 new vehicles on the road, according to Alex Broda, the city's director of transportation planning.

"That's a lot of vehicles right now," he told Canada AM Thursday.

In addition to increased roadway construction, the city has also introduced a number of alternative commuting initiatives.

"We're encouraging people to change their travel time, change their travel behaviour, alternate modes of travel, walking, cycling," Broda said.

Meanwhile, the round trip for Montreal workers took 76 minutes last year, up from 62 minutes in 1992, which amounts to an extra 2.5 days a year.

In 1992, only 47 per cent of Montreal workers spent an hour or more on a round trip. By 2005, the average duration had risen to 60 per cent.

In contrast, the average commuting time in Vancouver stayed the same in 2005 when compared to 10 years earlier.

Provincial disparities

On the regional front, in all provinces except for British Columbia, more workers allocated more time to making the round trip last year.

Fewer did it in less than one hour, but these averages varied from region to region.

In British Columbia, the travel time remained steady between 1992 and 2005 at about 60 minutes.

However, average travel times went from 45 minutes to 57 minutes for the three Prairie provinces.

About 71 per cent of workers on the Prairies spent less than one hour commuting between their home and their workplace in 1992. By 2005, this proportion fell to 56 per cent.

In the Atlantic provinces, the average travel time also saw a significant increase. In 1992, nearly 45 per cent of workers spent less than 30 minutes making the round trip but by 2005, only 30 per cent did so.

In Quebec, the proportion of workers taking an hour and a half or more on a round trip rose from 15 per cent in 1992 to 27 per cent in 2005.

The study also found that the average travel time climbed for those who drove to work and those who travelled on public transit.

For those travelling by vehicle, the average travel time rose from 51 minutes in 1992 to 59 minutes in 2005.

For public transit users, it climbed from 94 minutes to 106 minutes.

The government agency also confirmed what had long been suspected -- that it is often faster to drive to work than to use public transit.

In 2005, for example, 55 per cent of workers travelling by vehicle made the round trip in less than 60 minutes.

But only 13 per cent of individuals commuting on public transit spent less than an hour of travel time.

The best case scenario, StatsCan found, was for workers who live in an urban area with a population under 50,000 or a rural area, who live less than 5 kilometres from their workplace, who travel by automobile, who have no children to drop off and pick up, and who make no stops.

On average, such workers will spend about 15 minutes on the round trip on a weekday.

Not surprisingly, factors that affected the average commute included distance from the workplace, method of transportation and area of residence.

"The greater the distance between home and workplace, the greater the average duration of the round trip," StatsCan reported.

"For example, compared with workers living less than 5 kilometres from their workplace, the predicted round-trip duration increases by 25 minutes for those living 15 to 19 kilometres from their workplace, by 48 minutes for those living 30 to 34 kilometres away, and so on."

Predictably, method of transportation also affected travel time.

Commuters who used public transit alone, as well as those who used public transit and an automobile, spent an average of 41 minutes longer on average travel time than those who only drove.

The StatsCan study, the first of a series of four that paint a picture of the daily activities of Canadians, is based on data from the 2005 General Social Survey on time use.