Calgary has grown a lot in the last 50 years, and so has the transit system.
Today, the city has a population of over a million people with 1,000 buses and 193 C-Train cars carrying 94 million passengers a year.
But 50 years ago, Calgary already had a well-established bus system in place.
In 1960, the population was 325,000 with 175 buses carrying 23 million passengers a year.
Calgarians rode in diesel and electric trolley buses, which had rubber wheels but got their power from electric lines above the street. Bus fare was 15 cents.
Calgary's population soon reached half a million in the 1970s. Calgary Transit got rid of trolley buses and added more diesel models, which were more dependable in sunshine and snow.
Mayor Ralph Klein was at the controls as the first C-Train, which opened on May 25, 1981, went down the track.
Twenty years later, in 2001, the LRT system became the first in North America to be powered solely by wind energy.
But the bus system has not been left behind.
Innovation in bus technology has resulted in an extensive system of feeder bus routes, mainline routes across town, and bus rapid routes using the new, long "articulated" buses.
Currently, the city is seeing the expansion of the west LRT, scheduled to open in December 2012.
Transit is a crucial part of "Plan It Calgary," the city's blueprint for the future.
