Calgary Transit

What would eventually become Calgary Transit began as the Calgary Street Railway on July 5, 1909, with twelve electric streetcars serving what was at the time a city of 30,000.

This streetcar service expanded throughout the next thirty years (including the Depression) until 1946, when the company was renamed to Calgary Transit System as electric trolleybus vehicles began replacing the local streetcars. Eventually the electric trolley lines were phased out together — to be replaced by diesel buses. In 1972, CTS assumed its current name of Calgary Transit.

Between the early 1970s and 2000, Calgary Transit had a three tier bus service. Standard bus routes were identified with white bus stop signs. Blue Arrow bus routes, marked by blue signs, provided limited stops, and all day service to suburban neighbourhoods from the city centre. Express service was indicated with red signs and provided extremely limited bus service to the far reaches of the city during peak hours only. These tiers have been slowly phased out, since Calgary Transit began expanding CTrain lines and capacity, and implementing BRT service. The last Blue Arrow route was cancelled in December, 2019. Express routes now appear side by side on the same signs as regular routes. MAX routes appear on a separate white and grey sign, while non-MAX BRT lines (routes 300, 301, 302, and 305) appear on red and white signs.

In 2012, Calgary Transit planners presented mayor Naheed Nenshi's council with a tentative 30-year plan 'RouteAhead' to enhance the capacities of Calgary Transit.

On December 13, 2012, Craig Hardy, became the one hundred millionth rider of the year. He received free transit for a year and was celebrated by mayor Nenshi.

Current service and fleet

Calgary Transit operates 147 regular scheduled bus routes as well as over 150 school express or special routes using over 1,000 vehicles, all of which are low floor and wheelchair accessible, and most of which have bicycle racks. Vehicle models used include the 40-foot (12 m) New Flyer D40LF, D40LFR, XD40, XN40, as well as the Nova Bus LFS diesel and LFS CNG. The 60-foot (18 m) articulated bus fleet is composed of the New Flyer D60LFR and XD60. Community Shuttle, which provides scheduled local service with smaller buses, is currently made up of ARBOC Freedom vehicles.

The light rail vehicle (LRV) fleet includes the system's original Siemens–Duewag U2 cars, 110 Siemens SD-160s, and 69 Siemens S200s. Calgary Transit's 72 original style SD160s were delivered in three orders between 2000 and 2007 and have all since been retrofitted with Air Conditioning and the newer red and white livery. In June 2010, 38 new restyled Siemens SD160s, featuring factory equipped AC and various cosmetic and technical changes over the previous series, began to arrive. In January 2016, the first of 63 Siemens S200 cars began arriving which entered service in July 2016.

The CTrain system along with several mainline bus routes provide the backbone of the system while many feeder bus routes and express services act to complement this backbone service. Service frequency on the CTrain and busier bus routes is typically from 5–30 minutes with operating hours of about 5 am – 2 am. Most feeder bus routes run at 15–45 minute intervals with similar operating hours on most routes and reduced on others. In addition there are many rush hour only services, some are feeder routes and some are express routes, these usually run 10–30 minutes apart.

Facilities

There are six major Calgary Transit facilities to store and maintain the transit fleet, as well as run several operations departments to keep the system running: