[rayiner]

Statistics do tell the story, but you gotta use the right statistics. Using the population of arbitrary geographical regions (provinces and states) isn't a useful measure. For transit and rail, a useful measure might be something like "population density of a region encompassing 50% of the metro area population."

A single rail line from Quebec City to Winnipeg, through Ottowa, Toronto, and Calgary, with a spur to Edmonton, would cover all eleven of Canada's largest cities, with 30% of its whole population. That's within those municipalities (i.e., people can take local transit to the inter-city rail line). You cannot draw any similar line that encompasses anywhere near that percentage of the U.S. population. Even if you connected America's 11 largest cities, you'd only have about 26 million people (about 8% of the country).

A big reason is that most people who live "in Dallas," for example, don't actually live in the city. Dallas and Ottawa are similar-sized cities of about a million people each. But Ottawa encompasses 70% of its metro area, while Dallas encompasses less than 20% of its metro area. Look at a satellite map of each city. Dallas is sprawl for about 40 miles in each direction from the city center. 40 miles from Ottawa is nothing in every direction (and for the most part, so is 20 miles).

[Bartweiss]

Yes, thanks for this. I mentioned a few particularly empty provinces, but I think working from state/province level or even county level is a fundamentally misleading approach.

The obvious question is how many infrastructure hubs (cell towers, train stations, highways, etc.) are needed to cover X% of the population. And following that, how closely connected those hubs would be.

Suggestions like "Canadians live near the border, but Americans live near the coast so it's similar" completely ignore that reality. The Acela corridor (D.C. to Boston, including Philadelphia and NYC) is the most efficient population-coverage route I know of in the country, but it can't possibly touch the efficiency of that Quebec City to Winnipeg line. Among other things, America has two coasts, and also vastly less urban density than Canada.

[jamie_ca]

We almost have that. VIA Rail operates "The Canadian" line that runs Vancouver-Edmonton-Saskatoon-Winnipeg-Toronto, as well as a line that runs up the ON/QC corridor from Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City.

I can't speak for the latter, but we took the Canadian from Vancouver-Winnipeg for a family reunion a few years back. It was a great trip, except for the 6h delay sitting just outside Winnipeg due to backed up freight traffic (I believe VIA leases access to most of the track, and has to yield to any freight trains) that meant we were getting off the train and had to find a hotel at midnight, instead of getting picked up by family at a reasonable hour.

[Spooky23]

I think we're making the same point. The GP was pointing out (correctly) that PEI has the highest population density of a Canadian province, which is similar to small states like Maine.

I'm saying that the raw number isn't meaningful, and you have to zoom in to find value and evaluate it in context.