Urban planning YouTuber gives Calgary transit big props in new ranking
The Calgary transit system just got a shoutout from a YouTuber, landing in the top five of his ranking of North America’s best transit cities.
YouTuber Ray Delahanty, or CityNerd, is a former transportation planning and engineering consultant known for his in-depth analysis of cities and transportation. He has racked up nearly 400,000 subscribers on the platform.
He recently posted a video looking at the best 15 transit cities in North America, and Calgary made the top five.
To get the ranking, Delahanty analyzed each city’s 2024 total ridership across metro-area transit services and divided it by the region’s population to measure rides per capita. Calgary came in fifth place, with 97.4 rides per capita in 2024.
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“This is a city I’m super interested in checking out,” Delahanty said. “I haven’t been in decades, I don’t even remember them having light rail at all, but at some point, they managed to surpass their pioneering neighbours to the north. Almost 100 million rides on the CTrain alone in 2024.”
Calgary’s CTrain system includes two light rail lines, 45 stations, and more than 60 kilometres of track in operation.
He also highlighted service frequency, noting the trains run at roughly five-minute headways during peak periods and about every 10 minutes at other times.
When it comes to our neighbours to the north, Edmonton came in eighth place with 72.3 rides per capita in 2024. “North America’s first light rail continues to expand, and the ETS bus system is no slouch either,” Delahanty said.
Other Canadian cities to make the list were Ottawa in seventh with 92.2 rides per capita, Montreal in fourth with 149.1 rides per capita, Vancouver in third with 152.9 rides per capita, and Toronto in second with 165.4 rides per capita.
New York’s transit system topped the list with a whopping 179.9 rides per capita in 2024.
You can watch the full video below.