Border Travel From U.S. To Canada Nose-Dives 82%

Travel from the U.S. to Canada has been cut back during the coronavirus crisis and new travel statistics are at historic lows.

Border crossings from the U.S. via land were down a whopping 82% overall last week compared to a similar period last year. Meanwhile, air travel between the two countries dropped 90%, according to new statistics released by the Canadian Border Services Agency.

Commercial travel, which is less restricted, was also down, but less dramatically, as the volume of trucks crossing the border dropped 24% over the same period last year.

The CBSA statistics compare travel over a week and a day in March to volumes during the same period in 2019.

They represent traveler movement since the announcement of “additional enhanced border measures related to foreign nationals on March 16 and the suspension of non-essential travel along the Canada-U.S. border on March 21,” according to a CBSA release.

When the plunging CBSA statistics are broken down to one day and individual travelers, they are even more striking. On land, travelers arriving via highways on March 29 hit 6,455, compared to 172,178 on March 31, 2019.

Of those, 2,446 travelers arrived on U.S. flights on March 29. Compared that to March 31, 2019, when 60,067 flew into Canada. International flights dropped from a one day 2019 total of 76,585 to a mere 5,950 in 2020, a drop of 92%.

Overall, 129,195 travellers arrived in Canada via flights in the week of March 23-29. For the week of March 25-31, 2019, the total hit 850,212.