New bus routes and On Demand Transit went into service at 5am on Sunday, April 25.
“We’re very excited to see a modernized transit system coming to a street near you,” said Carrie Hotton-MacDonald, branch manager of the Edmonton Transit Service (ETS), in a news release. “This is a major step towards providing the type of service Edmontonians told us they want today and to meeting evolving transit expectations as our city grows in the future.”
New routes and schedules are available at edmonton.ca/transit, the Transit app, and Google Maps.
There are now six types of routes:
- Frequent, which run every 15 minutes or better on weekdays
- Rapid, express routes with limited stops
- Crosstown, connecting suburban destinations without going through downtown
- Local, connecting neighbourhoods with transit centres
- Community, connecting seniors' residences and other community hubs
- School, connecting students to nearby schools
Frequent routes are numbered 1-9, crosstown routes are numbered 50-56, and the remaining types are numbered with three digits. The 100s in the north, the 900s are in the west, the 700s are in the southwest, and the 500s are in the east and southeast. School routes are numbered in the 600s. Rapid routes end in X, and routes ending in A or B are branches of a route.
On Demand Transit is available for customers in 37 communities that do not have a regular bus route. The service can be booked online, by calling 780-496-2400, or via the Android and iOS apps.
A livestream hosted on April 1 with Sarah Feldman, director of planning and scheduling at ETS, addressed many common questions about the bus network redesign, including why the change was made now, how to read the new bus stop signs, and how customers with mobility challenges will be helped.