วีดีโอ

I know I said this in another recent video but I don't understand the claims people make that Calgary has a bad transit system or isn't great for Bikes? We have one of if not the largest Bike path system in North America and one of the top rated transit systems (the bus routes leave much to be desired though). Like do people visit Europe and forget that Calgary is far, far larger in size than the majority of European Capitals??? Around 820 KM^2 , the reason why Calgary lags behind Europe when compared to them is population density. Its not financial viable for Calgary to make major investments in the infrastructure like that because we simply don't have enough people to fund those projects, Berlin for example is nearly the same size but has almost 3x more people.

So happy you enjoyed your time here. We dutch love the canadians. Greetings from the Netherlands.

I’d be very hard pressed to call Calgary a car dependent city. We move more people with the LRT than almost any other similar system in North America, we have more bike paths than almost anywhere and dedicate bike lanes along much of downtown now. If you went back 15-16 years sure, but things have changed a fair bit since then. The only area I’d say requires a Car is if you live in the deep S.E. since the Green line is still a number of years away.

Its the insurance what is outrageos. It doenst depend on the amoun you drive, its fixed. So if need to move a lot, a car is still a good option.

One question, can I borrow one of your bikes? :) I live in San Diego, and also am car free. The part of San Diego I live in it is easy to be car free, but other areas of town not so much. I just have one E-bike. Outside of that I take the bus, trolley, Uber, and once so far I have rented a car, a few times I have driven friends cars on trips. I do keep my DL.

How much is that per mile or km?

7:40 that did not age well

Yep, cars are expensive, you are a genius!

Works out to $300/mo USD ($450/mo CAD). $10 a day. This is most certainly on the lowest of the low end. Not bad though, if having a vehicle is “needed” in your daily life and most certainly cheaper than ubering around.

When you have kids, you will understand why you need a car

It’s around 2 hours for me to get to around the bend😢

I'm sorry but I believe I've never seen such a biased video in my life. Definitely cars are not a NEED, but a WANT for most people. But breaking down costs like that is extremely stupid. 50 thousand dollars sound ABSURD but you gotta understand that it's over the span of 8 years. That's approximately $520 a month to have a car in tip top shape, accounting for: Gas, Insurance, maintenance and registration. if you get paid $18 an hour (minimum wage where I live), that's less than 20% of your monthly income. The example of e-bikes seems unrealistic once you put climate change in the mix. How are you gonna drive an e-bike with snow on the roads? What if you wanna go on a road trip with your girlfriend? If you are going to get out in the cold you also need to get better winter clothes. If you can take the bus, that would be cheaper than owning a car, but they don't go everywhere. Cars are a luxury and that's a fact, but that video made it sound like if you have a car you're stupid when that's literally not the case. There's a ton of reasons to have a car and a ton of reasons not to have a car

nice that you were here, but to be honest you just have to implement it and people will get used to it themselves, if you do nothing you will have no results. Here you hardly hear anyone complain and safety is getting better and better.

After 2 winters in NYC e-biking, I got myself a motorcycle helmet recently in preparation for the upcoming winter. We already had a night where it got down to 7 degrees (Celsius) and it is so nice. I feel like I am really bundled up and separate from the wind chill. Before I would try to dress warm but no matter what I wore around my head it would still be cold on my face, particularly as the temperature gets to around 0C. 7 celsius was never that bad to begin with, it is a common everyday winter temp for us, but it was a good test to already see how much the helmet will help as it gets colder.

My city has some of the worst bus service imaginable. It takes 3 hours to get from my home suburb to downtown. It takes me about 25 min to drive it, even during rush hour. If I wanted to go from my suburb to another suburb just 15 min away, there is no service at all. Driving is the only option other than walking 16 miles. I have never used my city's transit before because there simply is none within 7 miles of my home. Buses in my city serve every single parking lot and strip mall on their route. So most of the trip is spent farting around parking lots at walking speed. To improve my city's service: buses need to run at a sane frequency, actually use the road instead of putting around parking lots, and actually serve places where people live instead of making the terminus a big parking lot at an abandoned walgreens.

insurance for that car is too big. In Slovenia for 2017 VW polo 1.2 tsi r line, 500€ per year full insurance.

10K On gas in 8 years wow, i do that ina year LOL

Edmonton Transit System has became my 1# worst enemy. I have missed multiple exams because of it

Coming from Vancouver, it's nice that Calgary has some transit but it's definitely lacking. My partner rides from the southwest to the university each day and the busses make it a dice roll for whether it'll take her 50 minutes or 2 hours. It's crazy to see busses changing their displayed routes *after departure* (I'm looking at you 41/36).

ALEX!!!!!

In university I learned how much time it would take me to leave so I could take the ctrain and be able to catch the bus I need to get home, very useful in winter, when the buses weren't late.

As a lifelong non-driver with a parent who was a lifelong non-driver I can relate so hard to the planning and strategizing, jaja. But for the most part my life would revolve around bus trips that would be avg 30 min long, with a single bus trip. However, years ago I got a job at a mall across the city from me and it would take 1.5 hrs to get from my doorstep to the employee room with a walk-bus-walk sequence, or save 20 min and make it a walk-bus-train-walk scenario. So a 2.5-3 hr travel time each day I went to work, regardless of choice, so I went with the simpler walk-bus-walk sequence. Yada yada yada- I’ve accepted transit life in calgary most my life, but it can be ridiculous.

Plus one for the people... the people in Calgary have a way of making me feel welcome that I still appreciate after all these years. Random strangers say Hi to me in the middle of the night. Its... refreshing and it makes me smile.

I make 3-4 transfers to travel to a trading card show every month or so, which can take anywhere from1hr30min to 2hr30min. I dynamically change my route every time I make the trip based on real time data I get from the Calgary transit app, which depends on which bus arrives first or if there are any routes out of service (last time a portion of C-train stations were closed). I try to figure out which route takes the least time by checking arrival times at transfer stops and give each transfer a 3 minute buffer and hopefully doesn't miss any interchanges. I can do this cuz there's nothing else to do on the bus. Its actually crazy stressful to watch the bus movement in real time and changing my route based on whether I think I'm about to miss the transfer, and locating the new bus stop under time pressure. And missing a bus really hurts having to wait 30 minutes. But damn I just went to Hong Kong for vacation and when one of their subway trains leave the platform another one immediately arrives😯 But unfortunately population is just too low in Calgary for this to happen.

After having lived in or been a frequent visitor to Montreal and Toronto, I was quite shocked to see just how inefficient the Calgary transit network is. Buses that run every 30 or 40 or 50 minutes? No wonder ridership is so low. When you need to get to a timely appointment and have to spend almost as much time waiting for a bus as riding a bus, you're going to just not bother and get a cab, assuming you can afford it. If you can't afford it, you have no choice but to leave many minutes earlier than is reasonable and consume a large part of your day getting somewhere and then back home. Never mind the meandering routes Calgary buses can take, making it more difficult to get somewhere directly across town in a straight line.

Neat im being recommended fellow people from Calgary

As someone who visits Calgary semi-often but doesn't know the city really well I really wish the in bus announcements would complete and not just cut off mid sentence at request. I wasted about 2 hours last time I was there because I missed stops I didn't hear. "Next stop: Norfolk and...stop requested!" Norfolk and where??????? Finish the announcement!!

I live by the 106 and 99 route and at the stop by me they both arrive within 5 minutes or so of each other, and once they leave its 30-45 mins for another one. Luckily, I suppose, its only a 15 minute walk to the C-Train station but its still annoying on bad weather days. Oh they also do not run late so if I'm done work at 9, I can't take the bus home and have to walk lol

I'd love for you to get an interview with a transit planner to discuss some of this.

93 doesn't come close to the 27.

I rode the 17 which became the 93 my whole life. Missing that bus destroys all plans.

Bikes... I avoid calgary transit like the plague... I leave when i want, I arrive early, i just have to bundle up for winter. Sunday morning via transit were 2 and a half hours to arrive on time, by Bicycle 35 minuets.

Calgary bus frequencies feel really ridiculous in winter. Waiting thirty minutes in below -15 isn't fun at allllll

Guess who's on my shitlist? Yup, calgary transit. An absolute clown show.

I've spoken with a couple transit planners at city open houses and was disappointed to hear both of them comment that they don't actually have ready access to transit times, volume numbers, etc. The last one was 7 - 8 years ago, though. They were at an open house near where I live and they were talking about how they were doing a study on how to get more trains on the red line, in order to accommodate more riders. As chance would have it, two days prior, I had the wonderful experience of getting on the train at 3rd St. Station and was heading home. It was May or June, the weather was nice, and I'd caught the train just a minute or so after stepping on the platform, so I was encouraged that I was going to make it home in good time. Fate was not on my side. As we came out of the tunnel at Stampede Vic Park, the driver announced that there were "too many trains on the south line" and that we were going to have to disembark at Vic Park and catch another southbound train. I'm sure that you're aware that at 4:15 or so, the south bound trains can get pretty packed coming out of downtown. You now have the passengers of a full train, all standing at Vic Park, waiting to get on the next train, which was already full of riders from the train that was sent back through downtown. It was 5 more trains before I was able to get on another south bound train. Hindsight being what it is, I should have just grabbed the next train back through downtown and gone up a few stops and jumped on another south bound train that had lots of room. <sigh> hindsight... Anyway, when I told the transit planner of that situation (and of several others that I'd experienced at various points along the south line) she said that she wasn't aware of that happening, but that they can't access the trip info directly, so they might not be getting the full info about trip timing and volume. Thankfully, I have one bus (of several that stop near my home) ride to a train station, and one train to downtown for work. Most days, I'm pretty reliably 50 minutes door to door, each way. Though, there can be a walk of either 200 or 600 meters to get to that bus stop, or back home from that bus stop.

In this day and age, there's no reason to go out anymore except to work. Ditch the car!

With that many levels of shinanigans and for the infrequency of once per week, id just uber it. Glad i work from home now and i donr have to deal with calgary transit or downtown. When i did take transit, it was usually not more complicated than bus-train-bus. And offen not even then as I've always lived within a 20 minute walk from a station.

In all cases I would rather walk longer and only take one bus rather than walk less, wait longer, and take two buses. There are 2 routes I can choose if I'm taking the bus and I always choose the one with more walking and 1 bus, because I enjoy walking. But I shouldn't have to, people who can't walk long distances shouldn't have to sacrifice their time to wait while transferring buses!

Another issue with a late-arriving bus is that your valid for 90min single ride ticket may have expired by the time the next bus arrives.

i spend winter times being tormented by 15 minute late route 14 busses that are jam packed, or the 167's that come every 45 minutes and cut off at 7:30pm on saturday-thursday

I lived in Calgary for about 12 years. I consciously chose my residence so that I was within walking distance to a grocery store and a C-Train terminal. I took the train to work Downtown every morning, but I generally returned on the #2 or the #6 -- the trip took a bit longer, but I could always get a seat. If I needed to get somewhere not well served by transit or time was at issue, I just took a taxi. The (much smaller) city where I live now has a pathetic excuse for public transit. I lasted for six months and then I bought a vehicle.

You SHOULD be a transit planner - everything you have said is what I've been saying for years with Calgary Transit - minor changes would be such a game changer. I don't believe anyone involved in transit planning ACTUALLY takes Transit. Every single time I look at taking transit and it's 3 times longer than if I just drive? I just drive.

14 billions of evolution years in the universe conspired to put the time stops in the least convenient spot possible.

what are your thoughts on the green line LRT cancellation?

Please make a video on what you think would be ideal tram lines in calgary! just came back from paris and i’m in love with the trams that bring citizens to main train lines

yah the transit here in Calgary is terrible unfortunately ive had to use this system my whole life and i appreciate this video so much! this transit system has been Broken for a very long time especially in the cold season i Remember having to wait an hour 45 for a train in -28 at 39th ave multiple times and many important routes like the 147 dont even have a big enough bus for its people (ive had moments where im pressed agianst the door so much its popped open mid travel on this exact route) and our city officials controlling the system don't use it cause of there privilege, and its easy to tell because every quarter update they make the routes worse or remove good routes like the 103 down by the Lionsgate seniors facility the people there already need as much help as possible and the city took there bus away this bus was the main route for train station and the only local grocery in the Sunnyside area. It was amazing back in the day when u would always have the same driver and u could have good relations, however it has been changed so that u almost never have the same driver back to back to stop drivers from giving free rides to people who need it. If ur in calgary its almost always faster to walk and use the train then any bus system here there almost all bad the drivers are always always late and drivers are also never punished for messing schedules up even if they delay it by 2+ hours from for example not showing up on time. our route 90 in the nw has this issue lots and its is never reprimanded otherwise it would've changed. (i know because the driver before this guy is always complaining about him being hours late when i ask y the bus is an hour 30+ late) which is a fair question when ur city averaged -30 last year. Every time i use the bus system i got to skate or e scooter/ bike on top for good timings, or just bike from spot to spot and use train in-between for long trips is still more efficient. One my routes last year i had to wait so long for transfers i actually developed a shopping habit at the local store by there instead and would just go shopping in between my transfers lmao..... Love the vid hope some city officials see this video, glad u found a sub hour route home it definitely helps with the QOL

I recognize the 27/93 stop issue you're referring to and I agree that it's nonsense. I used to frequent it on Wednesday nights, and the absurd wait times made me wonder if the trip out was even worth it some days.

Living downtown makes it soooo much easier to take transit anywhere

Just moved to Calgary from Vancouver, and I loved figuring stuff like this out back in Van. There was a very regular express bus that stopped a ways after my apartment, and a less common bus that had frequent stops, including one right in front of my place. The high I would get from hopping off the express bus onto the other to shave 10 minutes off the trip was incredible. Google never told me to do it either, I would have to figure it out on a case-by-case basis. Optimizing commutes can be such a fun game.