I work in a Medical Clinic. This past Tuesday I had an 88 year old patient in a wheelchair waiting on her Calgary Access ride home. They did not notify her that they had arrived and when we finally noticed they were here and got her outside, they pulled away and would not stop when I tried to flag the driver down. The poor lady then had to wait over an hour for another bus to pick her up. This is totally unnecessary and very difficult for a person her age. Do better Calgary Access! read more

Zero stars ought to be an option. Mostly non english speaking drivers who haven't got a CLUE about the geography of Calgary. They don't know how to follow GPS and SCREAM at the customer if they can't find your address! You can be carted around for hours passing by your home several times while they drop off and pick up other passengers. I got covid from a senior passenger coughing non stop sitting right next to me and not wearing a mask during the pandemic. Worst service EVER and the application procedure is a nightmare. Condescending interviewer made me sick. Good luck if you need to use this 'service' Be prepared to get heat stroke in the summer. AC is usually broken on the few cars that have it. The 'Handi-Bus' has no AC and is the worst torture I have ever experienced. NEVER AGAIN! read more

Booked a ride then they cancelled it an hour before I was supposed to leave,if at all possible be sure to book a day or 2 ahead so this won't happen to you read more

I sometimes have to take long journeys to the central areas of Calgary as I now live in Seton by the south Calgary hospital.Some of the drivers in both large and smaller vechicles are very heavy on the brakes and after a while I start sliding futher forward in my wheel chair seat.Some drivers are very gentle and respect the limitations of the dreadful suspension on these buses.The buses give a terrible ride quality and lurch and bang over bumps.After half an hour of heavy braking I am almost out on the floor despite the seat belt being tight.I asked a driver if he could pull me up and backwards but was told he was not allowed to do that.So a lot of times I arrive at my destination ruffled,shaken and stirred and need time to compose myself.Still good value for money though and I suppose worth getting beaten up. read more

This is a wonderful IDEA but it is run so badly that it is not only a joke but dangerous. The controller should be fired! The cannot make changes - if THEY make a mistake, the controller simply cancels the trip and books a new trip on standby making you wait, wait, wait. Used the service to take my mom 96 to Rockyview yesterday for pacemaker clinic. Another lady was dropped off at the same time at back entrance. We were taken to front entrance and had to push the wheelchair through whole hospital and up and down a huge incline to get to the back entrance anyway. I called to amend the pickup to back entrance and controller WOULD NOT amend. Just cancelled the trip and added an hour to wait for my mom. The same lady was waiting. with us at back entrance and handibus came for us but not the other lady. They actually sent another bus for her later and made her wait when we were both there and both had pickups booked for the same window of time. Somebody needs to learn how to organize and schedule and use some common sense here! The driver took mom's wheelchair and pushed her out the door over a bump (not slowly). Her foot which was in an aircast came off the footrest, driver kept pushing! Her whole foot w boot was trapped/ bent behind footrest and she could have rebroken her ankle. Driver blamed the footrest! He said it should have had a swivel. An airiest is slippery and going over a bump too fast will always result in it slipping off the footrest. You need to pay attention! When I took a photo of his drivers licence, it had been issued 2 1/2 months ago. Are they hiring new immigrants and not training them? Every time I have used this service, there has been a problem. Mostly the problems have been from the controller. Much better use of the vehicles and drivers would result in lower expense and better service! You would save a lot of money hiring someone qualified to reorganize with smoother functioning service that would save money. You get what you pay for! This could be a wonderful service. Please make it that way! read more

One of the best brainchildren of Calgary Transit, Access Calgary is door to door transportation for the elderly and the physically disabled. One must fill out an application and Access Calgary determines your eligibility for this program. Once you have been accepted you are entitled to this very organised and convenient service at the mear cost of a transit ticket ( $2.50) less for seniors. My mother uses this facility once a week, she can no longer walk and is wheelchair bound, so the nicest part of this program is that drivers will pick her up at set location A, strap her in safely to a mechanical lift that transports her into a bus or a van and brings her safely to her set location B. Driver will then pick her up and bring her back to point A. It is simply a phone call in advance which I book with her identification number and directions. The dispatchers at Access are wonderful to deal with; they basically recognise by voice by now and are very earnest in getting the my mother and I the exact times and dates. Not once have I had to change a time or a location. Even with our very drastic bout of snow, there was a delay of about an hour but never was a trip ever cancelled. My mother has always been toasty warm and this service allows her the freedom to do banking, go shopping and return to her home to visit friends and family whenever she wants. Kudos to you Access Calgary! read more

Access Calgary is for people with mobility issues. Yet, they insist that the applicants whom they know have mobility issues come and meet with them to complete their application process. To add insult to injury, they have set up offices at the new library by Westbrook mall that has no disabled parking or access for people to come to the interview. In order to get the people to the interview you must stop traffic, put on your four way flashers and assist the disabled person out of the vehicle. This is a NEW LOCATION - major head shake. Come on people........... read more

This service is very necessary and appreciated however the administrative staff is a hindrance to the good work the drivers do. The "red tape" and ignorance of the desk staff is terrible. This is extremely dangerous considering the fragility of the customers they transport...seriously- demanding my mother, who cannot even hold a pen to SIGN her application form!! Also would be great to have some more polished staff directing phone calls from families!! read more

I was very disappointed in a driver today .I was witness to disrespect of the client ,his wheel chair, caregiver and a Service Repair Tech, who had just made the clients wheel chair safe n sound. In which I suspect the wheel chair will be returning for repairs to the tire and hand rims which was hooked on and drag along a two inch ramp lip rim into the access vehicle . All I can say is it's a good thing this wheel chair has a seat belt or I am sure the client would have flew right out of the chair. When asked to slow down verbal ugly words came out of the drivers mouth towards the repair service employees. I as well as many other patrons,employees were stunned,horrified and very very concerned for the safety and welfare of all the passengers within unit 701 . sad but true 11/05/14 so is this effects of wrong person for the job,nagging dispatchers on no time allowances, for client mobility speeds. or the tax payers getting less then we pay for ????? Totally disappointed.. Access Calgary presented no human kindness ,understanding or common decent manners, nor one ounce of compassion towards others this day... read more

I have two clients that have been with my family for over thirty years. Both are mentally handi capped with some small physical limitations. The clients are with me 24hrs a day seven days a week, other than their day programs, and attend the their day programs Monday to Friday. They have been in the system for 30 and 40 years respectively. My father, until he passed away just over a year ago, was at their mercy also. The two clients still are. They used to have set pick-up times between 7:45 and 8:15 and for some reason Access can no longer guarantee any pickup or drop off times nor can they guarantee that the clients won't spend longer than 1 hour at any given time while riding in an access vehicle even when its a cab. Their pickup times can vary as much as 1 hour 20 minutes from day to day. I cannot keep them or myself on any kind of schedule. Two years ago I had a operation that resulted in infection and subsequent super bug that requires daily blood testing and if required treatment. My times are set for these test and I cannot change them until another appointment time comes available and I can lock that one in. Now I am required to do Access's job also. If they are going to be in that time that my appointment is set I have to wait until the one client is picked up and then cancel the morning ride for the other, take him with me and then drop him at his program. I then have to come home and call access to have his pm trip home reinstated. Since Calgary transit has taken over the access program is a total debacle. Very late pickups ( up to 50 minutes), drivers pulling u-turns across four lanes of traffic with clients in the vehicle, missed trips, booked trips never scheduled, unexplained injury while in their care and on and on it goes. My one client has spent so long on the Access bus that they have urinated in their pants and that has happened more times in the last few years than I care to count, once is too much. The regurgitated excuses from them are the same over and over and over again. I had the distinct displeasure of working for the city for 10 years and I see the same pattern has emerged in Access that did, and still does, in all other business units in the city, a sense of entitlement. I was dragged on the carpet a couple of times by management, when I still worked for the city, and told that my department was working to hard and making others look bad, slow down This is the mentality, it seems, still with the City business units. They can do whatever they want or don't want, with no consequence or regard, to these most vulnerable of our society and us. I have complained many times to the Aldermanic office and it does get better but only for a short time and then its right back to their do nothing or as little as possible mind set once again. We were told, when I worked for the city, that if any one from City hall Aldermanic offices came to ask us questions, or investigate that we were to say nothing and direct them to the nearest manager or supervisor on pain of losing our jobs. They don't want their massive failings and do as little as possible world rocked. If Access has failed to keep up with demand that is their cross to bear. An emergency on their part does not constitute one on ours and our clients, brothers, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins and family members. Access is failing miserably and what I would like to see is all of us as a family come together and tell them that enough is enough. They need to start doing their jobs and start treating our people as human beings and not a commodity. This is simple logistics and not rocket science. If they even hit a 25% mark in satisfaction I would fall over dead from amazement. You should see the new building, if that money had been put towards our clients and family their would still be problems because they would waste it any way. There needs to be a removal of all the management and a rebuild of the system from the ground up as these problems are getting worse and worse as the years go by. I'm beginning to wonder what it will take to get them to do something, anything? read more