How far to the nearest transit stop?

Transit agencies reported 1.6 billion passenger trips in 2024, equivalent to 40 transit rides for every Canadian. Many Canadians rely on public transit to get around every day, with over 1 in 10 commuters taking it to get to work, while others seldom or never use it. One factor often overlooked in the time spent “on public transport” is the time it takes to reach the nearest transit stop from home on foot.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of convenient access to public transport

The United Nations has deemed access to public transportation convenient “when a stop is accessible within walking distance along the street network of 500 m from a reference point such as a home, school, workplace or market to a low-capacity public transport system (such as a bus or Bus Rapid Transit) and/or within 1 km of a high-capacity system (such as rail, metro or ferry)” (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11.2.1 metadata).

How much time do Canadians actually spend on the bus?

We don’t track exactly how long people spend on a bus doing day-to-day chores or getting around town, but we do track commute times. The average commute time for public transit users stood at 43.1 minutes in May 2024. 

Commute times, however, can be considerably longer if a person lives far from a public transit stop, not to mention contending with the vagaries of a Canadian winter such as tramping through snow.

Nationally, approximately three in four Canadians lived within 500 metres of a public transit stop in 2024, with 81% of urbanites having convenient access to a public transit stop compared with 10% of rural dwellers. 

Conversely, convenient access to high-capacity public transit (within one kilometre) such as a subway or ferry was considerably lower in urban areas (7%) and almost non-existent in rural areas (less than 1%). 

Five-storey or higher apartment buildings in urban areas have high rates of convenient access to transit 

Convenient access to public transit depends very much on where and in what type of dwelling a person lives.

For example, virtually all Canadians (98%) living in a five-storey or higher apartment building in an urban area lived within 500 metres of a bus stop in 2024. This rate fell to 86% for those living in a row house and 73% for those living in a single-family home.

By way of comparison, 41% of Canadians living in a five-storey or higher apartment building in a rural area lived within 500 metres of a bus stop. This rate fell to 4% for those living in a row house and 2% for those living in a single-family home.

Almost one in five residents of Montréal have convenient access to high-capacity public transit

Just under one in five residents of the census metropolitan area (CMA) of Montréal (19%) lived within one kilometre of high-capacity public transit such as a subway or commuter train in 2024, the highest rate nationally, followed by Vancouver (17%) and Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo (13%).

Of note, residents in the CMAs of Calgary (10%) and Edmonton (6%) had more convenient access to high-capacity public transit than residents of Canada’s largest city of Toronto (4%).