Left behind? Crowded Calgary buses are leaving more riders shivering at the stop

Charmae Laurel says it was a common experience — seeing a full city bus pass her by while she waited at her stop trying to get to classes at Mount Royal University. 

On two occasions, she says, back-to-back buses passed by because they were too stuffed with passengers.

"I think it took me like two or three hours to get to school. I should have just stayed home at that point," said the recent grad.

That sort of situation is happening more often, according to data collected by Calgary Transit.

Calgary Transit calls them overloads. That's when the bus is so full, the driver can't pick up new passengers at a stop because it's unsafe to bring more people on. 

Bus drivers reported that has happened 361 times already this year, between Jan. 1 and Nov. 26, up from 266 times in 2023. 

Transit data, obtained through a freedom of information request, shows that bus riders were passed at stops 116 times in 2022, which was before ridership had fully rebounded post-pandemic. Calgary Transit did not keep such data before 2022.

Laurel says it happened to her a lot on the Max Yellow route near Mount Royal University. 

"It's defeating because I'm already busy with school and I have limited free time."

Inflated or underreported? 

The union and transit officials disagree on the numbers. The official data comes from bus drivers who record each bus overload in real time as they drive their routes. 

But Mike Mahar, union president with ATU Local 583, says these pass-bys frequently go unreported by drivers, and operators are left dealing with the skipped riders' frustrations. 

"I would say the vast, vast majority of operators don't push that button at some point just because it just becomes redundant, it just has no meaning," Mahar said.

Mahar says his comment is based on one-on-one discussions over the years, not data. And he sees it as a big problem.

"[Drivers are dealing with] frustrations like crazy, and then people will complain and the bus driver gets called in to the company to have a discussion on why they've had a negative interaction with the customer and it just compounds again."

Mahar says he hears of the issue happening most often during rush hour on routes with school zones and post-secondary schools, in industrial areas, and in the city's northeast quadrant.

It's a complex problem that needs multiple solutions, he says, such as buying more buses, hiring more mechanics and funding more drivers. 

He says having more buses for the routes with schools when they are letting out students at the end of their day could also fix some of the problem quickly. 

Calgary Transit's spokesperson Stephen Tauro says bus stop passes happen because ridership is unpredictable. 

A bus driver is not able to stop for more passengers when the seats are full and people are standing throughout the bus to the yellow lines near the doors, he says.

Calgary Transit says it doesn't have the data for which routes experience the most overloads, but Tauro says the operations centre monitors this in real time. 

"In our operations centre, we can adjust in real time if we have available buses to send," he said. 

Tauro says they also adjust service routes officially every three months using the system data, operator feedback and customer feedback gathered from a variety of sources, including social media.

He says when officials sit down to plan transit service, "sometimes there's more customer demand that we can't really anticipate."

Tauro says they want to strengthen their data collection, and transit users can help. 

"The biggest thing is for customers to report overloads to us. If they are left behind, they can call our call centre at 262-1000 and put in a report so that we have that data, and it will only make our data stronger." 

The next service adjustment will be Dec. 23.

Tauro says the total number of bus overload signals likely includes when CTrains are being routinely serviced or break down, and shuttles are used as a replacement, like in 2023 when Victoria Park's train station was shut down for nine days.

"Sometimes this function is used during our shuttle replacements, where there's large crowds of people at the station. So we may get duplicated entries as well within that data." 

Part of the trip?

Noel Amawan catches his bus at Centre Street and says he's become used to it happening, so he doesn't get too upset when it occurs.

But during cold months, that's hard to do. 

There's nothing really I could do. It's out of my control, so just gotta wait for the next one.- Noel Amawan

"It was in the –20s, and I was late for school, actually," he said. "It took like an hour for the next bus to come. It's a bad experience overall."

He says he felt helpless.

"There's nothing really I could do," he recalled. "It's out of my control, so just gotta wait for the next one."

David Kvellestad takes the No. 2 Mount Pleasant downtown and says schoolchildren do make an impact. He says it hasn't happened often on his route, but notices the No. 301 is often full. 

"It's pretty full just because of the school kids, and it'll go back to normal once the kids get off school," he said, adding people are used to it at this point. 

Laurel says that when full buses pass her and others by, there's a sense of solidarity, like "we're all in this together," which helps ease the stress. But it's a constant issue. 

"I understand it's what we have, but if we had a CTrain go to the northeast, like north central, that would be a lot easier."