School Express Routes

Students from both school boards as well as some private and charter schools use Calgary Transit services as part of their daily commute. We offer school express routes where we can, using a wide array of criteria intended to improve the efficiency of Calgary Transit operations, reduce our costs, and attract new riders who would otherwise not use transit.

We don’t operate designated school routes for every community or every high school. School routes are generally contemplated if:

• students are attending a regular program at their designated school,
• students using existing routes must transfer three or more times,
• the number of students overwhelms the existing service (we generally look for an enrollment of 90 to 100 students from a community),
• school bell times are such that adding a school route would not impede Calgary Transit’s ability to provide regular transit service, and
• resources are available. 

School routes are not guaranteed to have capacity to carry all students. Those who can’t get on a designated route are expected to use regular routes, or other means, to get to and from school. High schools with school express routes also have service from regular scheduled routes and students will often rely on both for transportation.