“Today was a bad day” – Calgary Transit struggles with snowstorm

CALGARY (660 NEWS) – If you braved the snowy conditions on Tuesday — either as a pedestrian or a driver — you likely spotted some Calgary Transit buses experiencing trouble in this early blast of winter.

It was an issue all around the city, as soon as crews hit the road early in the morning.

“We were challenged,” admitted Director of Transit, Doug Morgan. “Lots of delays, lots of late buses, we ask our customers on the hilly areas — especially in the north and northwest — to go down to the detour stops so we can eliminate the risk.”

Dozens of buses were unable to even make it through the conditions though. At the worst point, about 80 buses were trapped on the roads. By the early afternoon, that number had dropped to less than 70, but the delays did not improve.

Fortunately, there is lots of help at hand.

“We have about 20 teams out recovering buses. These are people that don’t necessarily work in the field, but we’ve called them out of the office to work with our operations staff to get out there, push the buses out and get Calgarians on their way.”

You may be wondering — since the buses are having such a problem — if they have winter tires. No, they don’t.

“We’ve done some testing on the traction benefits and the costs, and to this point, we haven’t seen a business case to make the investment in snow tires,” said Morgan.

He said their normal tires are usually good enough through the winter, but the combination of ice and heavy snowfall in such a short amount of time have proven troublesome in this case.

Nevertheless, Calgary Transit is focused on getting customers to their destination, as fast as possible.

“Understand that their bus may be a bit late, but we want to get you on your way and do that safely.”