The Argo has a gross tonnage modestly larger than the largest cruise ships of today. Assuming a single Argo can carry 4000 people (not a ridiculous number I don't think) and a fleet of 2000 Argos (also doesn't seem to be beyond the GTVAs capability) you could move 250 million people in just over thirty one trips.
Obviously, the GTA must have used Elysiums, but the principle remains the same, the smallest Freespace ships are quite large indeed. I don't think we need to imagine a Colossus sized colony ship for the one canon population figure we see to be feasible, or even mobile. The Elysiums tech description implies that it is the GTAs primary mover, and in sufficient numbers (quite a large figure) they could probably move millions, and eventually billions.
Now movement of equipment, I don't know about that. The GTVA must have cities, I suppose this must have taken many hundreds of thousands of TC containers to get industry started. (EDIT) On multiple planet sized colonies,