Eliminating the free fare zone is a mistake. It is just another attempt to criminalize and police the poor, and it is not new.

If you travel to the Calgary Police Service’s Campus at Westwinds, in the YouthLink Interpretive Center, adorning the walls you’ll find images of people arrested and charged by the Calgary Police over the years. Unsurprisingly, a number of the images tell the stories of policing poverty with charges such as vagrancy (having no place to go), loitering (simply existing in public spaces too long), or solicitation (having the nerve to ask for help from strangers in your community).

These charges have never been about criminal activity; rather, they’re about policing the morality of the poor. No crime was committed by these people in these images; they simply needed help from society. Instead of being given support, criminality was manufactured. New laws were created and it became a crime to be poor in public. These images tell a story about how Calgary treats those most in need.

On May 7, 2026, city council’s Infrastructure and Planning Committee voted to end Calgary’s Free Fare Zone. While the final decision lays ahead at a future meeting of Council, the message is clear: “No more free rides – if you’re poor, find somewhere else.”

The argument that councillors and Calgary Transit make is that eliminating the Free Fare Zone will increase transit safety by giving Peace Officers one more tool to police the poor, those in need of help and support, and those who don’t quite fit in. Now obviously, public safety is a significant issue that needs to be addressed. But Calgary Police and Calgary Peace Officers have numerous tools at their disposal to address anyone who is harassing people, are acting belligerent, using drugs in public, carrying a visible weapon, or even acting in an intimidating manner.

With all of these tools at their disposal, what does ending the Free Fare Zone give transit officers that they didn’t have before? Eliminating the Free Fare Zone allows peace officers to target individuals who are not disruptive, not causing social disorder, but maybe are not in a position to pay for a transit ticket.

Remember, if they cross any lines, the laws exist already to empower enforcement officers to protect public safety.

Calgary Transit also admits in its own reports that this initiative will only create a displacement effect – moving people from one place to another. Displacement isn’t safety, it’s a shell game pretending to be a solution.

Better solutions need to be found

Calgary and the Alberta Government need to find a solution to the public safety challenges that have emerged over the last five years. Calgary is facing an unprecedented growth in extreme poverty, increases in severe mental health crises in public, and the ongoing opioid epidemic. Covid-19 exacerbated these issues, pushing once private issues into public spaces.

For those in need, transit stations became warming stations in the cold of extreme winters or a short reprieve from our summer’s extreme heat. The CTrain became a lifeline for people accessing social services. The Free Fare Zone, a staple of Calgary’s public spaces, became a focal point for tensions between Calgarians using transit as a service, and Calgarians with no other place to go.

In response to the growing safety challenges, Calgary city council, Calgary Transit, and the Calgary Police Service have tried repeatedly to police our way out of the public safety and social disorder challenges.

Since 2022, over 70 additional transit peace officers were hired to bolster transit safety. By early 2026, Calgary Transit opened five new transit safety district offices along the C-train. The Calgary Police Safety Hub, bringing more police officers down to the train line has been operational for four years. The Calgary Police Service continues to run numerous undercover operations on the CTrain while also running military-style operational sweeps that see several dozen officers occupy downtown Calgary.

And yet, safety concerns remain.

At the same time, concerns were raised that Calgary Transit officers didn’t have the tools and legislation to effectively police social disorder. In response, council approved updated Public Behaviour Bylaws, stronger Street Harassment Bylaws, increased fines, and has begun the process to make illegal open air drug use bylaws more enforceable.

If social disorder could be policed away, then Calgary Transit and Calgary Police officers have numerous tools to address social disorder on transit. These solutions remain inadequate because the root causes of the problem sit within an underfunded, under resourced, and overburdened social services sector – no amount of policing will build more homes or the recovery facilities we need to solve this problem.

Social disorder won’t disappear with a ticket

To make this decision even worse, Calgary Transit already knows that this will fail to make the system safer. Three years ago, the City commissioned a report to see if installing fare gates would increase safety on the C-Train. Fare gates are nothing more than an extreme version of removing the Free Fare Zone.

The commissioned report found no correlation between transit safety and a locked down, gated, and paid system – poverty, mental illness, and addiction remained a problem across systems regardless of their level of exclusion and exclusivity.

I do have great sympathy for Calgary Transit officials and our City’s leadership. Council has been historically reluctant to engage in social services. Rather, seeing the pain and poverty Calgarians face, Council is quick (and righteous) in pointing the finger at the Government of Alberta for failing to provide adequate services to help those citizens most in need.

Meanwhile, significant pressure is on Calgary Transit officials to make transit safer. Riders, transit operators, and the broader community are tired of being subjected to the systemic failures that cause the real or perceived lack of public safety.

That feeling of helplessness will drive anyone mad. It is in this madness that irrational and ineffective decisions get made, especially in the face of a council constantly pressured to solve problems above their pay grade.

If Calgary city council chooses to eliminate the Free Fare Zone, it will be a meritless decision that will punish the most vulnerable without making a dent in public safety concerns.

Because free fare or paid fare, social disorder in our downtown won’t disappear behind a four-dollar ticket.