A Calgary city councillor is hoping to extend the window for Calgary Transit transfers, with an upcoming motion saying that it reflects rider needs and travel patterns.

Ward 12 Coun. Mike Jamieson will put forward a Notice of Motion for technical review to have the Calgary Transit transfer window extended from 90 minutes to 120 minutes.

In a post to social media, Jamieson said that he was responding to resident concerns.

“This is (a) response to what I’ve heard from Ward 12 residents who’ve had to pay twice for a single trip because their bus was late or they simply missed a connection,” he wrote.

In the Notice of Motion, Jamieson suggests the current 90-minute transfer window may be insufficient for riders “due to service delays, traffic congestion, weather conditions, accessibility needs, and system complexity.”

A 120-minute window could increase accessibility, flexibility and equity for transit riders, Jamieson wrote. His motion also mentions that “comparable transit systems in other major Canadian cities” provide longer transfer windows to accommodate rider needs.

Toronto and Montreal are the only cities that have two-hour transfer limits, while Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Ottawa generally have 90-minute transfer limits. Winnipeg recently expanded its from 75 to 90 minutes, and Vancouver has a two-hour limit if you use the West Coast Express, and Ottawa has extensions (105 minutes) during weekday afternoon commutes.

The Notice of Motion requests that city administration comes back with proposed fare policy amendments, along with changes needed to the fare validation systems. It would also require communication with the public.

Jamieson’s motion also asks for a report back on the financial and ridership impacts that might come from the extension.

Already pitched as part of transit improvements

Last March, former Ward 3 Coun. Jasmine Mian had worked with the Calgary Transit Riders  (CTR) group on a series of 15 rider- and operater-generated suggestions for improving Calgary Transit.

Increasing the transfer window to 120 minutes was one of the many suggestions put forward at that time.

Alex Williams with CTR said that when it was proposed, Calgary Transit had all sorts of reasons why they couldn’t move forward with this proposal.

“The tricky thing is that, because Calgary is such a large city and we don’t have as many work centers and as many shopping centers and amenities as spread out as we probably should for our size, a lot of people tend to spend a lot more time on transit,” he told LWC.

“Add to that that we tend to see people transferring from one bus to another, they might be waiting at the transfer station for over 20 minutes – that really eats into that window.”

Williams said he’d like to see what kind of data the City of Calgary has on transfers, and what the projected impact would be on revenue and ridership.

“I don’t really have enough information to speculate on how you know how it might go and what those trade-offs would be,” he said.  

“At the end of the day, we want a quality transit service that gets us to where we need to go.”

Williams said they support the extended transit transfer window.

“It could be a place where Calgary could kind of be a leader, because cities around the world, they don’t tend to have a window quite so large, but I think it would be fantastic if we did.”