Despite a steady stream of Calgarians speaking in favour of Calgary’s free fare zone, city councillors endorse its demise at committee.

A review of Calgary’s unique free fare zone resulted in city administration’s recommendation that the 2.5-kilometre downtown stretch adopt the $4 per ticket fee that other Calgary Transit commuters pay.

Members of the Infrastructure and Planning Committee agreed with the recommendation, approving it 7-4, with Couns. Chabot, Pantazopoulos, Jamieson, McLean, Ward, Wyness, and Johnston in favour.  Couns. Schmidt, Atkinson, Dhaliwal, and Yule were opposed.

The matter will now head to a full meeting of council for final approval.

Several citizens participated in public submissions on the matter, joining stakeholders like Tourism Calgary and the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

While the city review touted the potential safety improvements that would follow, and a potential $5 million windfall from additional rider revenue, Carson Ackroyd with Tourism Calgary said that the city should look at the free fare zone as an investment in the economy.

“At the end of the day, the decision before council is whether to trade roughly $5 million in revenue for a convention and visitor economy that generates hundreds of millions annually for Calgary businesses, workers and tax revenue,” he said.

“Respectfully, we need to look at the free fare zone not as an expense, but a strategic investment in Calgary’s economic growth and competitiveness.”

He said that meeting planners consistently rank financial incentives and attendee convenience among the most important factors in site selection.

Vincent St. Pierre, a downtown resident and board member for the Downtown Core Neighbourhood Association, said he’s on the free fare zone three or four times a day.

“We’ve heard from the different City representatives and civic organizations, so far, speak to the business benefit, but it doubles also as social infrastructure,” he said.

“One that allows people to meet neighbours and friends and speak to that social cohesion that we have as a city.”

Revenue, safety needs usurp the convenience of downtown travel

Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness said that she had been leaning towards voting to end the downtown free fare zone. She noted the need for funding to continue expanding service. City councillors heard earlier in the day that the Route Ahead plan needed more than $2 billion over the next 10 years to meet transit service needs.

“We have issues with safety and enforcement. The money has to come from somewhere to build the system,” she said.

“Our capital infrastructure costs are going through the roof. We’re spending a lot of money on public safety and transit. We need to expand the system.”

Ward 7 Coun. Myke Atkinson said that this will put a very important part of the downtown at risk.

“We have been making massive investments to make sure that the tax productivity of our downtown core rebounds from the bottoming out that we had a couple of years ago,” he said.

“Something like this potentially means that we’re having less people move around, less people visit businesses within the downtown.”

He felt the safety argument was dubious at best. Even the city review had suggested that “social disorder is likely to move to areas just outside stations, meaning overall downtown safety continues to require an integrated approach.”

Atkinson said that downtown safety has to be done from a holistic view.

“This will just shuffle it off, and it’s going to have repercussions on surrounding businesses,” he said.  

“We’re also going to see that if less people are moving around on the free fare zone, that means less people on our transit platforms that are just riders. That means less people on our trains that are just riders.

“There’s a safety that comes in community and all of us riding together that will be lost if we have less people riding in our free fare zone.”

Should it be approved at a full meeting of city council, the downtown Calgary free fare zone would end on Aug. 1, 2026.