The city of Calgary is hoping a tire swap will help Calgary Transit buses better navigate city streets this winter.
Dennis Uvbiama, the manager of transit service vehicles for Calgary Transit, says when the existing all-season tires on buses wear out, they are being replaced with all-weather tires that will be used year-round, and are more suitable for use in Calgary’s winter driving conditions.
Dozens of Calgary Transit buses were stranded on Calgary streets after being unable to navigate this storm in the winter of 2024.
Global Calgary
City officials showed off the new tires to local media Wednesday morning during an update on some of the ways the city is preparing for the eventual arrival of winter weather.
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“The all-season tires are generally designed to perform well on the dry pavement conditions,” Uvibama said. “The all-weather tires have more tread designed to help them move during the winter months, so when you have icy conditions you have deeper treads that allow the tire to better hold on to the pavement.”
“All-season” tires are designed to perform well on dry pavement. Calgary Transit says “all-weather” tires are designed to help them perform better in winter driving conditions.
Global News
Installation of the new tires will be prioritized based on the length of the bus, with the longest buses, which usually have the most difficulty navigating slippery city streets, first in line for the new tires.
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“We are going to be doing head-to-head comparisons between our all-weather and all-season tires,” Uvibama said. “We hope to get feedback and data in the process of doing this and hopefully hear back from our operators as to how this is working out for them.”
Uvibama also said the city is confident in the outcome of the switch. “Like most Calgarians that use all-weather tires, we expect that we should have better performance over our all-season tires that we use today.”
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Calgary Transit considered doing seasonal tire swaps on its buses, using winter tires in the winter and all-season tires in the summer. Uvibama, however, said that would be “logistically more challenging” because it would involve up to 5,000 tires twice a year. It would also be “cost prohibitive” because the winter tires are more expensive than the all-weather tires, which the city is able to purchase at the same price as all-season tires.
So far, the city has received about 1,000 new all-weather tires, about a quarter of what is needed. It plans to have them installed on all city transit buses by 2029.
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