HandiBus to take its Accessible Vehicles off Roads in Calgary

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Transit users of Calgary will be going through a change as one of Calgary Transit’s four accessible bus service providers, Handi Bus, has announced to pull their vehicles off the road and scale back their operation to an advocacy and fundraising role. So far, HandiBus has been able to become one third of accessible transit’s fleet, carrying around 35,000 passengers a month, whereas Calgary Transit currently does over a million accessible passenger trips a year.

According to Chair of Calgary HandiBus, Jim Brown, “this is a bit of an evolutionary process,” adding that “the intention is that HandiBus will continue to exist to raise funds, to buy new buses and donate those buses to organizations, including Access Calgary that provide transportation for disabled people.” The announcement revealed that the buses will be pulled off sometime into 2015 while Calgary Transit works with the company to sort out the best possible plan going forward. Director of Calgary Transit, Doug Morgan, stated “we really haven’t picked a solution,” adding that “we’re in the early stages of vetting out what we’ll do with the service and the trips that we have to provide, so it’s too early to tell which way we’re going to go.”

In his remarks, Brown stated that “the reality of it is that there are a lot of service providers out there that can provide service cheaper than HandiBus can,” adding that “some of those services are just fine, what HandiBus has always wanted to be there for is that group of people that really don’t have any other options.”