Trail, British Columbia
Wikimedia Commons via Wikipedia

British Columbia

Trail

OpenStats City Score, ranking history, and local readings for Trail.

How Trail scores

Trail sits at City Score rank #42 with a standing of 57%, from 7 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. The chart below shows how that standing moves year to year.

Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #159 of 172 (2025); residential mill rate rank #160 of 172 (7.35 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.

#42
City Score rank
57%
City Score

Local readings for Trail

Open each topic for Trail.

See where Trail water comes from

Local sports in Trail

Documented pro, junior, university, and high-school teams tied to Trail.

Hometown notes

Archive

Earlier years: 2026 · 2025 · 2024 · 2023

Trail in brief

Trail still reads itself as a Columbia River smelter city before it reads as a postcard. Municipal history starts at the river mouth and climbs into the zinc and lead complex that Teck Trail Operations still anchors; Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital sits beside that industry as the other regional employer people name without prompting. Downtown keeps the Home of Champions Monument at Cedar Avenue and Farwell Street, a stone roll call that makes the Silver City nickname feel earned rather than decorative.

Hockey carries the same civic shorthand. The Trail Smoke Eaters, locally the Smokies, give the West Kootenay a junior club and a senior legend people still measure towns against. Recreation talk points to the Trail Aquatic & Leisure Centre, the big pool and fitness hub between Kelowna and Cranbrook, and to the Trail Memorial Centre next door in the parks menu. Visitors find the Trail Riverfront Centre on Bay Avenue, with the Columbia River Skywalk named among the river-facing amenities.

Local pages stay practical: Marigold Drive traffic notices, infrastructure grants, and wildfire weather on the Trail Times front. Pine Avenue still hosts City Hall while Bay Avenue handles visitors, which is a fair map of how the place divides work from welcome. The hometown frame is not a spa town inventing a past. It is a West Kootenay industrial city that put champions on a downtown corner and kept the Columbia River, the smelter, and the Smokies in the same sentence.

Drawn from City of Trail history, City of Trail Home of Champions, City of Trail Aquatic & Leisure Centre, City of Trail industry, Trail Times.

City Score over time

City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.

0%25%50%75%100%2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
OpenStats City Score

Rankings for Trail

Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.

sports · OpenStats

OpenStats BCHL Points Percentage

OpenStats

Cities with a British Columbia Hockey League club in the OpenStats seed list ranked by regular-season points percentage. Rank 1 = highest points %. Source: Wikipedia BCHL season standings. Clubs in towns outside the seed list are omitted.

Single edition · 2025

#4
Published · 2025 · of 16
Score 0.685

Only one published edition places Trail in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.

Original source · Full edition

Connectivity · OpenStats

OpenStats Broadband Download Speeds

OpenStats

Cities ranked by estimated best advertised download (Mbps). Anchored to the current ISED National Broadband Data vintage, then backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber-arrival and 50/10 availability paths so relative ranks can change over the decade. Not a claim of audited historical hex maps for every year.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#62
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 41.5

Construction · OpenStats

OpenStats Building Permit Value

OpenStats

Cities ranked by calendar-year building permit value. Direct rows sum Statistics Canada Table 34-10-0292-01. Cities without a direct reading use population × provincial per-capita permit intensity (estimated), so every seed city has a year-varying construction signal.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#159
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 59228400

Composite · OpenStats

OpenStats City Score

OpenStats

Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016–2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0–1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Growth and CSI use StatCan annual tables; permits, mill rates, and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#42
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 0.571

Safety · OpenStats

OpenStats Crime Severity Index

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index (Table 35-10-0026-01). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Values are CMA where a metro match exists, otherwise provincial CSI. Hometown pages label the grain.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#45
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 92.37

Water · OpenStats

OpenStats Drinking Water Hardness

OpenStats

Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#125
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 120

sports · OpenStats

OpenStats Local Sports Depth

OpenStats

Cities ranked by weighted count of documented local teams (pro, junior, university, high-school hubs). Rank 1 = deepest documented sports footprint among covered seed cities. Not a claim about on-field success. See sports methodology for weights and gaps.

Single edition · 2025

#117
Published · 2025 · of 172
Score 3

Only one published edition places Trail in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.

Original source · Full edition

Growth · OpenStats

OpenStats Population Growth

OpenStats

Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#86
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 0.011490168206586117

Property tax · OpenStats

OpenStats Residential Mill Rates

OpenStats

Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate. Rank 1 is the highest rate. Published municipal years are used when available; gaps are interpolated or follow the provincial median path so the tax pillar moves year to year for every city.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#160
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 7.350984690088892

Hazards · OpenStats

OpenStats Seismic Hazard (PGA)

OpenStats

Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#142
Latest · 2025 · of 172
Score 0.031

Worth knowing in Trail

Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.

  • The Home of Champions Monument sits at Cedar Avenue and Farwell Street and lists hometown inductees in business, sport, and culture.

    City of Trail

  • Locals still call the Trail Smoke Eaters the Smokies, a short form the city repeats on its own hockey page.

    City of Trail

  • Trail Aquatic & Leisure Centre is framed as the largest aquatic and multi-sport facility between Kelowna and Cranbrook.

    City of Trail

  • Municipal industry pages pair Teck Trail Operations with Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital as the region's two largest employers.

    City of Trail

Places to see

Home of Champions Monument

Downtown corner monument that turns civic pride into a readable list of names. It is the place you point to when someone asks why Trail calls itself the Home of Champions.

Trail Aquatic & Leisure Centre

Competition pool, leisure pool, waterslide, and fitness floor that serve as the West Kootenay swim hub. Lap lanes stay available even when the slide hours shift.

Trail Riverfront Centre

Bay Avenue visitor stop with museum and gift shop access on the river side of downtown. It is the practical front door for maps and seasonal event questions.

Columbia River Skywalk

Named river amenity on the municipal parks menu, part of how Trail orients recreation toward the Columbia rather than away from it.

Follow Trail by email

When Trail moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.

No spam. Unsubscribe with one reply.

Related guides

More places in British Columbia

All British Columbia cities