Breadcrumb Trail Links
Published Apr 23, 2026 • 4 minute read
An Airdrie bus drives down Main Street on June 13, 2021. Photo by Riley Cassidy/The Airdrie Echo jpg, AIArticle content
The City of Airdrie’s future transit plans include increased routes and service hours in Airdrie, a new route to Northwest Calgary, and potential fare integration for riders transferring from Airdrie Transit to Calgary Transit.
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Airdrie City Council approved a new 10-year Transit Master Plan at their April 21 council meeting. The plan is a guide for staff and council as they move forward with individual decisions.
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“The plan before you today is strategic and conceptual in nature,” Billie-Jo Arnott, Team Leader for Transit and Active Transportation for the City of Airdrie told council.
“The maps you will see illustrate direction and intent only, and will continue to evolve over time. Nothing in this plan represents approved service changes or funding commitments; any proposed service increases, capital investments, or staffing requests will continue to come back to council for decision through regular budget processes.”
To increase affordability for riders, the plan encourages Airdrie Transit to engage in fare integration with Calgary Transit. Arnott said that Airdrie staff have engaged in some discussions with Calgary already.
“Well, we have started the conversations with Calgary, there’s an openness on both sides to work together,” Arnott said. “There’s definitely more of an appetite for it today, as the regions do want to work together. A lot of the federal funding is based on regions working together. So, there’s a benefit to both municipalities to work together. We met as early as just this past Friday, and we’ve started the discussions. They’re still exploratory, but I’m very hopeful.”
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The plan calls for additions and overhaul to the Intercity Express (ICE) service to Calgary. It would include the consolidation of two current routes to downtown Calgary, the 901 and 902, into one route. All ICE routes would start and end at Airdrie’s South Transit Terminal, preventing overlap with local routes, but with provisions for some buses to serve ICE routes and local transit routes, allowing riders to not have to change buses in those instances.
A map showing the proposed new routes for Intercity Express buses from Airdrie to Calgary presented in the 2026 Airdrie Master Transit Plan. COURTESY OF THE CITY OF AIRDRIE Photo by Dillon Consulting /City of Airdrie
Also included is a proposed route to North Pointe Terminal in Country Hills.
“(North Pointe) would specifically provide good connectivity to the post-secondary institutions in U of C and SAIT,” Thomas Pacy of Dillon Consulting said of the choice of destinations.
“It would also provide connectivity to the AirPort Express bus. So, by going to North Pointe, you access a lot of higher frequency Calgary Transit routes, and it provides a real diversity of destinations that people can go to with high frequency.”
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Deputy Mayor Candice Kolson expressed concerns about the proposed route not addressing resident’s that wanted a direct route to post-secondary institutions in Calgary.
“That is really not the feedback that we had of what was needed,” said Kolson. “They were hoping for an ICE bus to and from SAIT or U of C. So, do the numbers not support that? Because I thought we’d probably be able to make money on that service by having a direct route.”
Pacy said that running directly to the University of Calgary would cost one-and-a-half to two times as much as running to North Pointe and the North Pointe Terminus offered more diversity of destinations once reached.
“North Pointe is the proposed terminus of the green line should that occur,” Pacy added.
The Master Plan calls for the North Pointe route to initially run weekday mornings and afternoon/evenings but would eventually run all day, seven days a week.
Changes proposed for the local service would include the addition of up to four more routes as well as buses running seven days a week, with a bus every 30 minutes in peak hours and every 60 minutes the rest of the time and the addition of a transfer site downtown.
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A map showing the potential new local routes for Airdrie presented in the 2026 Airdrie Master Transit Plan. COURTESY OF THE CITY OF AIRDRIE Photo by Dillon Consulting /City of Airdrie
Kolson expressed concerns about the location of the transfer site, shown in the plan as First Ave.
“My biggest alarm bell, because everybody knows how much I love First Ave and traffic, having a hub or a transfer site on First Ave, to me, is absolutely insanity,” Kolson said.
City staff expressed that the location is just a suggestion, and that the city doesn’t actually have any land purchased or a plan for the exact location.
Engagement for the master plan included with the public through online surveys and in-person sessions as well as meeting with key stakeholder groups.
Mayor Heather Spearman felt that the engagement could have done a better job expressing the barriers that non-transit riders have to using it.
“My vision, my dream, if I could wave my magic wand and be the queen of this whole world is I would want to see people want to ride transit more than taking their own cars, that that is the incredible transit dream,” she said.
“What I don’t see is the question of, ‘What is stopping you from taking transit?’ And that was the question, I think, in all of this, I wanted to see.”
Airdrie City Council voted to approve the Airdrie Transit Master Plan with Kolson being the lone dissenting vote.
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