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 with our proprietary algorithm 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 | Milwaukee | 462 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (78% of cells reach 50+) |
| 11 | 419 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 12 | 369 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (44% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 13 | CalgaryCA | 367 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (75% of cells reach 50+) |
| 14 | 347 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (61% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 15 | Cleveland | 317 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (76% of cells reach 50+) |
| 16 | Kansas City | 313 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (62% of cells reach 50+) |
| 17 | 270 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (69% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 18 | Cincinnati | 258 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (67% of cells reach 50+) |
| 19 | 255 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (56% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 20 | 241 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (65% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 21 | Columbus | 235 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (65% of cells reach 50+) |
| 22 | 227 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (54% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 23 | 206 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (68% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 24 | 203 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (56% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 25 | Richmond | 203 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (56% of cells reach 50+) |
| 26 | 183 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (55% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 27 | Louisville | 162 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (59% of cells reach 50+) |
| 28 | 158 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 29 | Jacksonville | 154 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (54% of cells reach 50+) |
| 30 | Sacramento | 151 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (62% of cells reach 50+) |
| 31 | Oklahoma City | 151 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) |
| 32 | Nashville | 150 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (51% of cells reach 50+) |
| 33 | 135 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (50% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 34 | Riverside | 135 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (53% of cells reach 50+) |
| 35 | 130 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (57% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 36 | Indianapolis | 124 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (58% of cells reach 50+) |
| 37 | 121 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (52% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 38 | Raleigh | 118 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (52% of cells reach 50+) |
| 39 | 110 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (45% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 40 | Virginia Beach | 95 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (55% of cells reach 50+) |
| 41 | Memphis | 72 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (41% of cells reach 50+) |
| 42 | Providence | 54 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (34% of cells reach 50+) |
| 43 | 53 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (37% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 44 | 50 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (40% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 45 | 27 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (16% of cells reach 50+) | |
| 46 | 24 POIs reachable within a 30-min transit trip from a typical cell (13% of cells reach 50+) |
Ranked by total destinations reachable. 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 hexmap engine and count the destinations actually reachable within the time budget. Measured with our proprietary algorithm across 497,214 POIs and 31 metro networks — not survey data, and distinct from amenity-density scores like Walk Score.
Multi-region transit isochrones from our proprietary algorithm (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 transit pass (_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 our live multi-region proprietary transit 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.)