NAICS 48511Industry · 5-digitlocal market

Urban transit systems

SoftwareTransit & Paratransit Scheduling Software 485

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in operating local and suburban mass passenger transit systems. Such transportation may involve the use of one or more modes of transport including light rail, subways and streetcars, as well as buses. These establishments operate over fixed routes and schedules, and allow passengers to pay on a per-trip basis (whether or not they also accept payment methods such as monthly passes). — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 183
Under 10 employeesA: 9%
Establishments · USA: 652
Employment · USA: 45,342
Payroll · USA: $2.8B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–4116%

5–953%

10–192111%

20–492514%

50–992212%

100–1995832%

200–499179%

500+2413%

Of 183 Canadian establishments with employees, 9% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Ontario7843%

British Columbia3117%

Quebec3016%

Alberta1910%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Transportation and Warehousing, US · opened 2020

84.1%

1 year

67.4%

3 years

52.7%

5 years

36.1%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 485, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 485 Transit and ground passenger transportation

School bus and charter are contract businesses won at tender; taxi was repriced by ride-hailing. Revenue follows the contract term.

Who sets the price: Public contracts and regulated fares.
The software it runs on: Scheduling, routing and dispatch, including paratransit.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4851 Urban transit systems covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4851

Contracted Transit OperationsStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost + regulatory drag

Urban transit is a buyer, not a market to enter. Routes, fares and service levels are set by a municipality or a regional authority, and the 183 establishments are mostly those agencies and their operating arms: 99 of them employ 100 people or more [A], the opposite of an owner-operator industry. The economics explain why nobody competes for the rider. Canadian agencies collected C$4.0B of operating revenue in 2025 on 1.55 billion trips, still 82.2% of 2019 ridership [A], and the Canadian Urban Transit Association reports that operating revenue covered only 35% of operating cost in 2023, down from 51% in 2019 [C]. A service that recovers a third of its cost from customers exists by appropriation, and only a government can run it. The enterable proposition is the contract underneath: some systems — York Region, many smaller municipalities, most paratransit — tender operations to private operators for a fixed fee per service hour. That is a real business, and it is held by a few multinational contractors who bid with a depot, a trained workforce, a bonding line and a safety record on comparable systems. The tender's qualification criteria are the barrier: an entrant without prior transit operating history does not reach the pricing round, and the winner's margin is whatever the agency's cost model allows over a multi-year term. What is sold to transit more accessibly — scheduling and paratransit software, screened separately at 485, and specialised transport at 4859 — is where a new firm should look.

NAICS 48514 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 485 Transit and ground passenger transportation

Transit & Paratransit Scheduling SoftwareExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

Incumbent Trapeze Group (Modaxo / Constellation Software, Canadian — Toronto)

Every sale is a municipal or transit-authority RFP with a procurement officer, a board vote and an incumbent already integrated with the farebox. Constellation's Modaxo has been buying the incumbents for a decade, and the venture-funded challengers have mostly converted into service operators because selling software alone did not pay. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 4853 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Transportation and warehousing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Mail and message distribution occupations One industry 90.8%

Train crew operating occupations One industry 90.7%

Transportation officers and controllers One industry 75.7%

Transport truck and transit drivers Mostly one sector 65.4%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 63.9%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 57.7%

Contractors and supervisors, technical maintenance trades and heavy equipment and transport operators Mostly one sector 22.6%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 11.4%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 9.1%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 6.6%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 13.9%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 5.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 3.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 3.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 3.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.7%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.7%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 48511. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
485110	Urban transit systems	183	screened at 4851