Best transit cities in North America, measured — 2026
The cities where transit takes you the farthest. For a typical cell in each metro, we run real door-to-door transit routing on a GPU and count the points of interest reachable within 30 minutes — access walk, ride, transfers, and egress walk all included.
Leaders this year: New York City, Toronto, Vancouver.
| # | Metro | POIs in a 30-min transit trip |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1220 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (44% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 2 | TorontoCA | 973 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (71% of cells reach 50+) |
| 3 | 796 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (68% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 4 | OttawaCA | 795 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (71% of cells reach 50+) |
| 5 | 762 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (50% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 6 | 637 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (79% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 7 | 557 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (66% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 8 | 493 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (65% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 9 | 477 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (72% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 10 | 419 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 11 | 369 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (44% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 12 | CalgaryCA | 367 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (75% of cells reach 50+) |
| 13 | 347 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (61% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 14 | 270 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (69% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 15 | 255 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (56% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 16 | 241 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (65% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 17 | 227 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (54% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 18 | 203 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (56% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 19 | 183 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (55% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 20 | 158 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 21 | 135 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (50% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 22 | 130 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 23 | 121 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (52% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 24 | 110 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (45% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 25 | 53 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (37% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 26 | 50 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (40% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 27 | 27 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (16% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 28 | 24 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (13% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 29 | 9 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (16% of cells reach 50+) |
29 metros ranked. Linked metros open their measured commute-cost page.
How this is measured
This is a CommutingCost-measured accessibility ranking (cumulative-opportunity): for a stratified sample of grid cells in each metro we run real routing on the live GPU hexmap engine and count the destinations actually reachable within the time budget. Measured on a GPU hex grid across 497,214 POIs and 31 metro networks — not survey data, and distinct from amenity-density scores like Walk Score.
Multi-region GPU RAPTOR isochrones (the live hexmap engine, am_peak, best-departure timing). For a stratified sample of grid cells we seed the cell's access stops (engine egress within a 10-min walk) and run the engine's forward RAPTOR (_run_pass_outbound) to get the door time to every covered cell incl. egress walk; POIs in cells reachable <=30 min are counted (497,214-POI OSM dataset). Score = mean reachable POIs across sampled cells. Denver/Montreal skipped (GTFS data errors, same feeds that failed the regional precompute).
Frequently asked
New York City leads our measured transit ranking: from a typical cell you can reach about 1,220 points of interest on a 30-minute door-to-door transit trip. Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa round out the top four.
New York City is the top US metro for transit access, with roughly 1,220 POIs reachable within a 30-minute transit trip from a typical cell — well ahead of any other American metro in the ranking.
We run the live multi-region GPU RAPTOR engine (am-peak, best-departure timing) from a stratified sample of grid cells in each metro. For each cell we seed nearby access stops within a 10-minute walk, route forward, add the egress walk, and count POIs in every cell reachable within 30 minutes door-to-door from a 497,214-POI dataset. The score is the mean reachable POIs across sampled cells.
Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa pair dense rapid-transit spines with frequent feeder bus networks, so a large share of cells reach 50+ POIs in 30 minutes — 68 to 71% of sampled cells, higher than most US metros. The measurement is identical for every city, so the ranking reflects the network, not the methodology. (Denver and Montreal are omitted: their GTFS feeds had the same data errors that failed our regional precompute.)