Inventory Survey: “Infrastructure: Roads and Bridges, 2020”

May 24, 2022 — Statistics Canada has released new infrastructure data on publicly owned roads and bridges for 2020. In 2020, Nova Scotia had 28,340 kilometres of publicly owned highways and roads.  The largest portions of Nova Scotia roads are local roads, followed by collector and arterial roads.

Highlights for Nova Scotia —
  • On a per capita basis, Nova Scotia has more highways, arterial, collector and local roads than the national average.  Saskatchewan reports the largest amount of these roads per capita while the smallest amounts were reported in Ontario and Quebec (and British Columbia for arterial and local roads).
  • Nova Scotia also reports 4,316 bridge, culvert and tunnel structures in 2020.  Almost half of these were local bridges.
    • The amount of bridge, culvert and tunnel structures per capita was highest in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, followed by Nova Scotia.
  • Compared with the national number of bridge, culvert and tunnel structures per capita, Nova Scotia has more arterial, collector, local and rural highway bridges as well as culverts (here referring only to those with diameters greater than or equal to 3 metres).

LEARN MORE: For more information from this dataset, as well as definitions for the designations used in this survey, please click here.