City council split on potential large-scale changes to transit service

The city is looking at making large scale changes to Calgary Transit's service — but not all members of city council are on board with the idea.

Calgary Transit is looking at putting more emphasis on a primary transit network, a system of reliable and frequent service which they say will encourage more people to ride.

It would be a big shift, sort of away from prioritizing coverage in every single nook and cranny of our city towards, let's deliver that frequency that people want and will actually rely on," said Ward 3 Coun. Jasmine Mian. 

"What I hear from a lot of residents, is that a lot of the neighbourhood routes are important but not always meeting their needs to get where they need to go."

Routeahead, the city's strategy of a 30-year plan for transit services, was under review at a meeting on Thursday.

Council members debated whether or not to reduce transit coverage in parts of the city in favour of creating a primary transit network.

That would allow Calgary Transit to reliably offer service every 10 minutes throughout much of the day, but it could also have some transit users walking farther to get to a bus in some areas.

The discussion had Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp wondering how much benefit that potential change would bring about.

"What is the trade off, what happens when you do need to walk further to catch the bus, who's better off?" she said, adding that she'd like to see case studies to understand the issue better and explain it to constituents.

 "Because I can tell you, we spent two and a half hour on this item, and I still walked out of there going, 'So what did we approve? And what does this report mean?'"

The updated Routeahead plan and possible service changes will be put before council by the middle of next year.