Here's why Calgary Transit buses don't use winter tires
Picture this: You’re sitting at a red light on Country Hills Boulevard. The snow is falling, and the roads are icy.
A bus pulls up next to you, but it has trouble stopping because of the road conditions. You’re likely thinking to yourself, do they not have winter tires?
No. They do not.
Instead, public transit buses in Calgary use transit industry all-season tires.
“There are several reasons why we do this,” Jenn Boyer, the communications and information lead with Calgary Transit, told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview.
In 2014, Transport Canada did a review of full-set winter tires and 40-foot buses. That report, she said, came back with considerable improvements in traction for those buses.
- You might also like:
- Major CTrain service impacts for 9 days due to construction starting later this month
- Calgary vs. Edmonton drivers: People say one spot is WAY worse
- Fuel up, Alberta: Gas prices are rising again
But that isn’t the problem.
“If we loop back with Calgary Transit, it’s not our 4o-foot buses we have issues with; our 40-foot buses are doing fine in the snow; they’re rarely affected right by significant snowfall,” Boyer said.
“For us, it’s our 60-foot buses. Those are the accordion-style buses.”
A winter tire is made of a softer, pliable type of rubber. That’s what gives them traction attraction on the powdery snow in the ice.
The kicker is that those tires wear substantially faster than all seasons, particularly on dry pavement.
But it’s winter; why are we talking about dry pavements? Boyer points to Calgary’s unpredictable weather patterns.
“We can have we can have our first snowfall in September; we can have our last snowfall in April,” she said.
Winter tires also don’t have sidewall protection. That’s a problem because buses need to pull up as close as possible to the curb and, more often than not, scrape the sidewalk.
So, would having winter tires on all year make more sense? Also, no, Boyer said.
“If you go back to the piece that winter tires wear out after 20,000 km, you then get into resources, cost, all of that stuff,” she said.
“We found that the all-season tire is the best answer.”