Access to Transit

Transit systems connect riders to a variety of goods and services. In HRM, the predominant modes of public transit are buses and ferries connecting communities across Halifax and Dartmouth. These systems provide economic (e.g., get people to jobs), environmental (e.g., reduce use of cars), and health-related benefits (e.g., facilitate walking to bus stops) to the communities they serve. More specifically, health-related benefits of transit systems include increased mobility, improved accessibility to services and amenities for non-drivers, and increased physical activity by stimulating more walking and bicycling trips to connect to the transit network¹. The US National Household Travel Survey revealed that 29% of transit users achieved the often recommended 30 minutes of physical activity per day simply by walking to and from transit².

The values for this indicator were calculated as a percentage of the population located within a reasonable walking distance of any transit stop. The percentage of people in each COMe within 800 metres (i.e. a 10-minute walk) of any transit stop was calculated using a Network Analyst geoprocessing tool in ArcMap 10.5. The populations within each COMe boundary and the locations of all transit stops in HRM (n=2,403) were identified using the 2016 Census (Statistics Canada) and HRM Open Data (2019), respectively.