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Canadian Public Transportation

An interdisciplinary guide to finding, accessing, and learning about public transportation in Canada.

Searching Help for Researchers

Resources for researchers of public transit and transportation can be found in the "For Researchers" box on the left. This category links to databases, journals, and other materials related to public transportation from a variety of disciplines.

Gather keywords:

  • Use synonymous terms to broaden search 
    • public transit, urban transportation, etc
  • Check database index or thesaurus for relevant subject terms

Use Boolean operators to narrow your search:

  • AND combines terms, searching for works that include all keywords
    • "transit AND Canada" returns results that contain both "Canada" and "transit"
  • OR searches for works with either keyword
    • "transit OR Canada" returns results with "transit" or "Canada"
  • NOT excludes words from the search
    • "transit NOT airplane" returns results that include "transit" but removes results that include "airplane"

Other searching tips:

  • Phrase searching (" ") - Placing terms in quotation marks ensure the phrases are searched together
    • "public transit" returns results for "public transit", instead of "public" or "transit" individually
  • Truncation (*) -  An asterisk tells the database to search for all words that start with the shortened term entered
    • "trans*" returns results for transit, transport, transportation, etc
  • Wild cards (? or #) - A wild card symbol is used for words with potentially different spellings
    • # denotes there may or may not be a character in that position 
      • "labo#r" returns results for "labour" and "labor"
    • ? denotes the correct term may contain a variable letter in that position
      • "hypothesi?e" returns results for "hypothesise" and "hypothesize"

Searching Help for Travellers

Resources for travellers intending to use public transit and transportation can be found in the “For Travellers” box on the left. There will be a general overview on the first page, with additional subsections for local, regional, interregional, and remote travel. After selecting a subcategory, it will open an overview of travel options that may be available to you as well as potential conditions or expectations.

To locate bus schedules, many individual cities have their own transit apps like HFXGO (Halifax) or Transit (many Canadian and US cities) which include bus schedules, updates, and expenses. Often these are also available through their websites. For example:

To locate ferry schedules, most municipalities will have their own website with the schedule attached. Otherwise, there can be provincial ferry maps allowing travellers to identify the name and location of different ferries that can be researched after. Here are a few examples of both:

To locate train schedules, some apps will include this information like the Transit app but private organizations often have separate websites. For example: