And Canada has one of the lowest population densities, a tenth of the USA, and yet has considerably better public transit (though worse than most of Europe).
One major difference I noticed from the USA is that it's usually, at least in principle possible to get from any point A to any point B in a Canadian city over about 20,000 people, by public transit, because even small towns often have public transit systems in Canada. (It might take a couple hours, though.) In many US cities, it's simply not possible because there is no public transit system.
After all, in every developed country, most people live in cities. Government policy and funding seems to be most of the difference.
I'm not sure "technically runs a bus, which may or may not be practical to use" is the most useful metric here.
While I certainly agree there are substantial bright spots in parts of Canada for transit investment, there's also big and worsening issues.
Rural inter-city transit has been getting drastically worse out in much of country.
VIA Rail has mostly been in a long-term downward spiral of cuts/"service suspensions" outside the main Ontario/Quebec corridor.
Inter-city buses aren't much better. Recent years have had Greyhound giving up and quitting Western Canada, and Saskatchewan shutting down their inter-city bus company. The result being limited patchwork of services not coming anywhere close to the kind of service that used to be provided.
Having lived in both countries, I’m not sure there is that much of a difference. Pretty much all the large US cities have public transport. The only Canadian cities I’ve seen with something close to say NYC are Toronto and Montreal. Getting around mom Skytrain in Vancouver is doable, but painful from a lot of areas.
And of course Canada has one of the lowest population densities when you average the population across the swaths of uninhabited arctic. But 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border in a handful of cities.
One major difference I noticed from the USA is that it's usually, at least in principle possible to get from any point A to any point B in a Canadian city over about 20,000 people, by public transit, because even small towns often have public transit systems in Canada. (It might take a couple hours, though.) In many US cities, it's simply not possible because there is no public transit system.
After all, in every developed country, most people live in cities. Government policy and funding seems to be most of the difference.