40% = 50%

Fred Winsor of the Sierra Club tells VOCM:

We would have like to have seen some discussion about regional public transit. We've got fifty percent of the population living within an hour's drive of St. John's. At least even doing a feasibility study on what kinds of public transit are feasible in terms of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that would be a big one, because greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles is one-third of the emissions in the province.

Whatever the merits of public transportation in St. John's and area — and this corner is a big fan of public transportation of all modes — fifty percent of the population of the province does not live within an hour's drive of St. John's, at least not officially as of the most recent census.

At that time, about 200,000 people lived in the St. John's Census Metropolitan Area, and in the municipalities and unincorporated areas within an hour's drive, as per the official guvamint driving distances database. That represented about 39.5% of the provincial population.