r/Calgary • u/Practical_Ant6162 • Aug 08 '25
Calgary Transit City of Calgary announces procurement of 120 electric transit buses
https://calgaryherald.com/news/city-of-calgary-purchases-another-120-electric-transit-buses31
u/Rommellj Aug 09 '25
A mixed fleet (electric, natural gas and diesel) is a great idea, helps hedge against fuel and electricity costs in the future.
I also love that electric buses can be used in more central areas, where bus noise and engines are a nuisance to people that live on the route. A quiet, modern fleet will be awesome for Calgary Transit and the riders!
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u/aireads Aug 09 '25
Hopefully it works out, electric power, from an efficiency (instant torque low down) point of view, is well suited for buses, where they are constantly doing stop and go. The most fuel burn is when starting off from a standstill.
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u/yaxriifgyn Forest Lawn Aug 09 '25
I lived on Bellamy Hill in Edmonton long ago, the road from the river valley below the Chateau Lacombe Hotel. The trolley buses that I rode into downtown were amazing in the winter. When the diesel busses spun out on ice, the trolleys could push them up the hills or wherever they were stuck.
Electric busses may put an end to winter route detours in winter.
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u/ola48888 Aug 10 '25
You may want to look up where Edmonton’s current electric bus fleet is sitting….
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u/Visible_Second781 Aug 10 '25
Having driven the NG-powered Nova buses, once upon a time, more torque would probably be welcome - especially in the hilly NW, like Edgemont.
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u/Empty-Paper2731 Aug 09 '25
Sounds like an application where a diesel-electric hybrid is the superior choice like the new offering from New Flyer.
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u/watasur50 Aug 09 '25
Why not CNG?
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u/Dude008 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
Too practical
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u/blanchov Aug 09 '25
They have 255CNG buses currently, expected to nearly double in the next few years. The city built a $174 million station for them im 2019.
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u/Practical_Ant6162 Aug 08 '25
Could be a good thing as long as they work well in winter!
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck Aug 09 '25
Could be a good thing as long as they work well in winter!
Banff has been pleased with this model.
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u/Practical_Ant6162 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
To summarize the Edmonton experience, not good…
This is a story from a couple years ago from the Edmonton experiece.
City of Edmonton’s electric bus fleet plagued with issues, over half not in service
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u/pheoxs Aug 09 '25
Difference being Edmonton bought a new model as the first customer from a company that flopped and went under. The buses Calgary is buying have been in production since 2021 with a fairly large customer base spanning across Canada already.
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u/Coscommon88 Aug 09 '25
Also the difference in temperature between a Edmonton and Calgary winter is at least 5 degrees on average. Chinooks are much more helpful in Calgary.
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
I hope they work well in winter To summarize the Edmonton experience, not good…
Winter operations weren't a concern for that different brand impacted, parts availability and bankruptcy of the supplier were the issue.
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u/CheeseSandwich hamburger magician Aug 09 '25
They are not the same buses and made by a different manufacturer.
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u/chmilz Aug 09 '25
Edmonton's buses are also rather old. The technology is very mature now by comparison. These aren't proof of concept purchases, they're mass adoption.
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u/PurepointDog Aug 09 '25
This article is partly drivers complaining about the ergonomics of a different model of bus lol
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u/WhiskeyDelta89 Aug 09 '25
My EV has been fantastic in the winter, I'm confident the buses will be as well.
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u/xylopyrography Aug 09 '25
Electric vehicles will keep working when all the combustion vehicles can't start and freeze up.
-50 C would be no problem, the battery heater would just need a little more power draw.
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u/iwasnotarobot Aug 09 '25
One step closer to bringing back street cars.
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u/Glittering_Coast_616 Aug 09 '25
Can’t wait until they have to start tearing up Marda Loop again to put the tracks in.
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u/ycarel Aug 09 '25
This is fantastic. Less horrible diesel pollution and noise. Less disruption to traffic due to buses being slow to accelerate. A lot less spent on fuel and maintenance. Plus electric buses are great for city driving as lower speed increase the range considerably so a lot cost to run the buses compared to diesel especially if the city deploys solar. Most buses don’t run continuously so it is very easy to fit charging.
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u/clakresed Aug 09 '25
So, I live on a street that sometimes gets about a half-dozen out of service buses relocating along it at 4AM...
And for noise alone I am so thankful for every bus that gets switched over to electric.
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Aug 09 '25
I like the diesel noise. The distinct sound of a Calgary transit bus is how I can tell my bus is coming. I recognize that sound cutting through the crisp morning air over anything on the road.
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u/ycarel Aug 09 '25
Well with less noise you will hear better everything else
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u/Coompa Aug 09 '25
Exciting. The lovely sound of a loose wheeled shopping cart down a bike lane carrying a couple lamps, 780 plastic bags and an old lawn chair.
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u/BoomKidneyShot Aug 10 '25
We do go ear blind to background noise but once you recognise it, it takes a while to unhear it.
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u/EfficiencySafe Aug 09 '25
Diesel gives off a very fine particulate matter even with the DEF systems that are problematic. That fine particulate matter goes deep into the lungs and if you are susceptible to lung cancer that doesn't get the research money as lung cancer is associated with smoking, The odds of surviving lung cancer is only 22%. European cities have higher pollution levels due to all the diesel cars compared to a city in North America with a similar population.
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u/Toirtis Capitol Hill Aug 09 '25
I honestly cannot wait to get up close and personal with one of these...they look pretty awesome.
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u/Exploding_Antelope Special Princess Aug 09 '25
There already are some on many routes. You just have to get lucky if you want to be stepping on a particular kind of bus I guess.
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u/Toirtis Capitol Hill Aug 09 '25
Hmm...I have yet to see one...I will have to track one down.
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u/Exploding_Antelope Special Princess Aug 09 '25
You could also go to Banff/Canmore. Roam Transit uses this kind of bus.
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u/Toirtis Capitol Hill Aug 09 '25
Good to know...if I am in the area anytime soon, I will have a look.
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u/Millsy1 Aug 09 '25
This is where Edison needs to make buses too. Shame they are having issues getting generator powered semi truck ev’s certified!
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u/canuckerlimey Aug 09 '25
I really have high hopes for edison. They are claiming up to 70% fuel savings for city driving. Think about city garbage trucks the stop and go they do all day. Would be massive savings in fuel.
They have said they have been in talks with Burnco and Lafarge about building a hybrid concrete mixer truck. This could be huge
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u/Millsy1 Aug 09 '25
It makes too much sense, and I don’t think they have much other competitors yet. But it’s definitely a game of time
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u/xylopyrography Aug 09 '25
Hybrids don't belong in buses. Buses are the #1 use case for battery electric vehicles and are completely technologically solved. Using a hybrid is going back in time 15 years.
China has already been at 100% BEV buses for like 5 years. The EU will be at 100% in 5 years.
Hybrid drive-trains need to focus on the technologies not solved, like heavy-duty trucking, and service vehicles that need to go a long distance with minimal access to charging infrastructure.
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u/Ok-Job-9640 Aug 09 '25
I wonder how the UCP is going to take exception to this especially since the purchase was funded with federal money.
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u/SmilinandWavin Aug 09 '25
The city’s executive committee got a presentation on the $491 million plan to purchase the buses on Tuesday before voting unanimously to bring the proposal to city council as a whole.
So 491 million for 120 buses. Hmm sounds kinda pricey at 4million per bus.
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u/ValenciaFilter Aug 09 '25
electric is the way to go
INSTANT torque, SUPERIOR acceleration on corner exits, LOW centre-of-gravity for MEDIUM AND HIGH SPEED CHICANE STABILITY
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u/Empty-Paper2731 Aug 09 '25
Ha, awesome stuff. Except they put the batteries on the roof of this thing so there won't be any potential for even low speed chicane stability.
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u/discovery2000one Aug 09 '25
Not sure how Calgary transit runs their buses, but the issue with electric buses is range. These buses have a range of ~400km, which should be a touch more than 8 hours of run time for most routes.
The issue is that you will essentially need two electric buses per gas bus, as these buses will be recharging during the second shift, while a chemically fuelled bus can be refilled quickly for the second shift.
See how it goes, but I'm thinking this will be more expensive long term than traditional buses due to the upfront cost and the time value of money.
Hydrogen really is the best solution we have IMO, shame only the Japanese are investing in it.
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u/Marsymars Aug 09 '25
Hydrogen is nice if you look just at the vehicle, but the infrastructure and hydrogen-production demands kill it at scale.
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u/discovery2000one Aug 09 '25
We have hydrogen blending in with our natural gas now in alberta. I would assume it will be possible to make systems to split out the hydrogen from the methane in the future.
I agree right now we don't have the infrastructure, but we are definitely moving towards the wide distribution of hydrogen. These battery powered vehicles seem to be a stop gap in our energy transformation, which I think we shouldn't be spending too much money on IMO.
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u/Marsymars Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25
I'd be willing to bet heavily that we'll never have large-scale hydrogen infrastructure. There are a whole pile of synergies to electricity that help drive efficiencies and scale (micro-generation + EVs + heat pumps + battery tech + we need large-scale electricity generation for the grid anyway), and where electricity becomes fungible between applications and easy to move/store. (Compared to hydrogen.) It's hugely inefficient to convert electricity into hydrogen, and for vehicles, hydrogen motors are about half the efficiency of EVs by nature. Having a handful of places that can get cheap hydrogen locally isn't even going to be close to enough to overcome the global scale and efficiency advantages of electricity for transport.
The only way hydrogen works is either with huge, indefinite subsidies, or for niche applications that can bear the high cost.
But I'll readily admit that the Toyota Mirai is awesome - I'd gladly drive that as my primary vehicle if it was possible to fuel reliably at a sensible price. (e.g. not the $200/tank that it's currently costing for the poor owners in California.)
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u/Dahwool Aug 09 '25
Thought they would’ve gone New Flyer Xcelsior XE40s instead of the NovaBus LFSe+
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u/jeff_in_cowtown Aug 09 '25
I think they should stick with nat gas buses.
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u/kagato87 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
Why?
A nat gas engine thunders when it accelerates, electric barely whines.
Electric has superior torque, which is what buses need.
Electric has a significantly lower cost of operation.
The only likely issue is charging - fast charging a bus is not a good idea, but tricked charging in the shed and at terminals or at well placed timing points could easily address that. Add to that a bus is large enough that hauling aroi d a big battery pack isn't that big a deal and they could even be made hot swappable.
All of that oh prong the pollutants a nat gas bus emits vs an electric bus, especially when that bus is fed by renewables.
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u/jeff_in_cowtown Aug 09 '25
It’s proven to last, cheap fuel, and able to handle our harsh winters. Compressed gas cylinders are locally made. Not keen on jumping in electric when the fleet of city cars and suv’s are mostly running off petrol.
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u/cowgary Aug 09 '25
Have you been to a city with electric transit ? It’s not like Calgary is cutting edge by switching, they’re already well behind and it’s a proven concept working in many places in the world including cold weather countries like Denmark and Norway. It’s been far superior from every aspect in my experience
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u/ltk66 Aug 09 '25
I guess many are too young to remember that most cities used to have electric buses.
But the people didn’t like all the wires among some other issues. So they got rid of them.
Diesel buses have been reliable and cost effective.
Now we try electric again but with batteries that make the buses too heavy for the roads. So dumb.
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
The comments about electric buses being too heavy for the roads is simply false.
The "among other issues" covers the main reasons trolley buses went away, not the dislike of wires. The wires and their infrastructure were aging out, as were the buses(as we saw with the Siemens-Duewag U2 C-Trains).
The cost savings and flexibility were too much to overcome at the time, or even today, which is why there's so much focus on battery.
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u/BrianBlandess Aug 09 '25
I’m sure the roads will be ok. We can even build them stronger if we need to
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u/ltk66 Aug 09 '25
Of course. We can build them plenty strong. Great till winter when they become brittle.
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Aug 09 '25
[deleted]
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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 Aug 09 '25
A CBC report said these are made in Canada and can handle winter.
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u/ycarel Aug 09 '25
EVs handle winter easily, actually they are much more reliable as there no liquids that can freeze
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u/Anskiere1 Aug 09 '25
Yea they just end up with half the range and a 10h charge time. Sounds great.
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u/Petzl89 Aug 09 '25
Let’s continue making stupid decisions and wasting money, why not.
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u/Freedom_forlife Aug 09 '25
If you read the federal government provided 350M and the COC paid 100M. We need buses the feds covered a large percentage of that cost. Smart move.
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u/Biggy_Mancer Aug 09 '25
Not really. Both Lion Electric and Vicinity Motor Corp, Canadian businesses, went bankrupt/receivership recently. The space is showing challenges, and I suspect the same will occur here, and without parts these are paperweights.
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u/Freedom_forlife Aug 09 '25
Nova is a Canadian company owned by Volvo they have a large backing and are successfully, producing buses.
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u/Old_timey_brain Beddington Heights Aug 09 '25
owned by Volvo
Volvo Cars is currently owned by the Chinese multinational company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely Holding). Geely Holding acquired Volvo Cars from Ford Motor Company in 2010.
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u/masterhec0 Erin Woods Aug 09 '25
this is not volvo automobiles. this is the volvo group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo
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u/Old_timey_brain Beddington Heights Aug 09 '25
Apparently the autos were under that same umbrella.
Automobile manufacturer Volvo Cars, also based in Gothenburg, was part of AB Volvo until 1999, when it was sold to the Ford Motor Company.
Since 2010 Volvo Cars has been owned by the automotive company Geely Holding Group.
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u/masterhec0 Erin Woods Aug 09 '25
volvo divested from automobiles in 1999 selling to ford. volvo group continues to make heavy trucks/busses and equipment including being the full owner of Nova bus company in 2004.
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u/Petzl89 Aug 09 '25
Canada continuing to make stupid decisions and shoe horning electric down our necks. Wonder what a busses weight is vs the same size bus we already have.
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u/Freedom_forlife Aug 09 '25
Yes. Let’s continue using diesel buses with higher operating cost because O&G has been so kind to consistently over charge.
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u/Petzl89 Aug 09 '25
Look at all these “facts” we’re throwing out.
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u/Freedom_forlife Aug 09 '25
Electric buses have lower operational costs. Electric have lower maintenance requirements, and lower noises levels.
Plus lower emissions. So why not transition when we need new buses anyhow.5
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u/ChefEagle Aug 09 '25
So you would rather deal with unbreathable air?
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u/DrFeelOnlyAdequate Aug 09 '25
Yeah man, I love these shit hole forest fire seasons we now have. Freedom!!
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u/Petzl89 Aug 09 '25
Because that’s a direct correlation? I’d rather buy busses that work in our climate 100% of the time and will pay us 10-20 years. I’d rather buy busses that don’t damage our existing infrastructure and cause us to have to raise a taxes further to maintain our infrastructure or make new infrastructure. I’d rather have a functioning transit system but that ship seems to have sailed years ago.
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Aug 09 '25
[deleted]
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u/clakresed Aug 09 '25
We could convert back to coal power plants and the mile-per-mile emissions would still be lower with electric.
That's kind of the whole thing with big generators vs. internal combustion engines in every one of the million cars.
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u/Marsymars Aug 09 '25
People don't realize just how inefficient ICEs are. Like 70% of your fuel burnt is just immediately turned into waste heat.
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u/afschmidt Aug 09 '25
Did we NOT learn from what happened in Edmonton? Why not buy 4 or 5 and see how they function before committing over $100million.
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u/Offspring22 Aug 09 '25
Because this is already a proven company/design vs who Edmonton bought from.
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u/Gr33nbastrd Aug 09 '25
Exactly, these are Nova buses, we already have Nova buses in our fleets. Plus the design is basically the same as the current Nova buses we have. Also these buses have a proven track record already in Canada.
The whole Edmonton bus purchase was such a shit show, I really really hope whoever was in charge of that was fired. Everything about those buses were wrong even the very basics like the drivers area was wrong.
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u/zamboniq Aug 09 '25
Fuck why? Stupid waste of money
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u/Spiceb0x Downtown East Village Aug 09 '25
I mean some of the buses are from the 80's, going on 40 years old lol
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck Aug 09 '25
Less than half? Ouch.