Edmonton Transit Service (ETS) launched its online merchandise shop on Thursday. “ETSshop.ca launches today with wearables and drinkware and a pre-sale for a holiday sweater that will ship in December,” Carrie Hotton-MacDonald told reporters at a news conference. “This is a great opportunity to also look back on our 118 years of history of transit in Edmonton, you may remember a classic red and yellow logo, or, my personal favourite, the distinctive Flying E of the 1970s and 80s. Now you can wear that history on a hoodie.” Hotton-MacDonald said additional products will be launched in 2027. Officials say there’s no cost to the city to run the store, and revenue will go to the city. ETS officials also used the opportunity to talk about the new partnership with the Transit app. The city announced last month that it had paid for a four-year subscription to the Transit app, which would allow all riders to use the premium tier of the app for free. The premium tier gives riders more trip-planning options while integrating on-demand transit service and other transportation modes, including Uber and rentable e-scooters. It also allows riders to provide feedback through the platform. “Edmontonians already send in more than 336,000 responses every month, providing feedback on things like lighting, cleanliness, and their overall trip experience,” Allison Gray of the Transit app told reporters. “Now that feedback goes straight to ETS to better understand the rider experience and identify opportunities for improvement.” Hotton-MacDonald says the ability to receive feedback from riders makes the Transit app more valuable to ETS than a free alternative like Google Maps. “Is the bus stop clean? Is something broken? Safety concerns, ridership frequency of the service. So all of that insight into the rider experience helps us make improvements for riders, and that’s something that none of the other trip planning apps is able to provide us,” she said. The subscription to the premium version of the app comes at a cost of $500,000 per year, which Hotton-MacDonald says is coming from existing budgets. Transit is a Canadian company which operates in 1,500 cities across 40 countries.
