Getting Around

Calgary is a transportation hub for much of central and western Canada. The airport, in the city’s North East, is the third largest in Canada by aircraft movements and is a major cargo hub. YYC has both the longest runway (4.2 km) and tallest freestanding control tower (over 300 ft) in Canada. www.yyc.com

The Rocky Mountaineer, www.rockymountaineer.com, and Royal Canadian Pacific, www.royalcanadianpacific.com, operate railtour services to and from Calgary.

The city is divided into four quadrants (North East, North West, South East and South West). Much of the city is on a grid where roads are numbered with avenues running east–west and streets running north–south. In Calgary it is not uncommon to find non-numbered streets within a new community that have the same name prefix as the community itself so that streets can more easily be located within the city, but this also makes it very important to make sure you know if it is a Street or Road or Boulevard, etc… that you are looking for.

Calgary Transit provides public transportation services throughout the city with buses and light rail. Calgary’s rail system, known as the C-Train, was one of the first such systems in North America and consists of three lines (two routes) on 90 kilometres (56 mi) of double tracks. The bus system has over 160 routes and is operated by 861 vehicles.www.calgarytransit.com

At any time of the year you can walk, run, ride or rollerblade through the entire city without ever touching a main road. Nearly 800 kilometres of pathways run along the Bow and Elbow rivers, connecting Fish Creek Provincial Park, Nose Creek, West Nose Creek, the Western Irrigation District Canal and the perimeter of the Glenmore Reservoir. Dozens of Calgary communities are linked by the pathway system and the City of Calgary works extremely hard to keep these pathways clear for use.

With another 290 kilometres of on-street bikeways, the city of Calgary can boast the most extensive urban pathway and bikeway network in North America.