How to Use Calgary 311: Reporting Problems and Requesting City Services

What 311 handles

Calgary 311 fields requests and questions across most municipal departments. In practice, the categories residents use most often are:

• Roads and sidewalks — potholes, damaged signage, icy or unplowed sections, streetlights that are out.
• Waste and recycling — cart issues, missed collection, replacement bins, and questions about what belongs in which cart.
• Bylaw concerns — noise, unsightly property, parking on a public road, and similar community standards matters.
• Water and wastewater — reporting a water main break or sewer backup on public property.
• Animal services — stray or injured animals, licensing questions, and animal-related complaints.
• Permits, licensing, and property tax enquiries — general questions and routing to the right department.
• Snow and ice — including questions about residential snow clearing and priority routes.

Ways to contact 311

Calgary 311 is reachable by phone and through the City’s online service request system. The online route is usually faster for anything that involves a specific location, because you can attach photos and drop a map pin.

Within Calgary you can dial 311 directly. From outside the city, or from a phone that cannot reach 311, the City publishes a standard local number on its 311 page.

• Online: the City of Calgary 311 portal, where you can submit a service request and track it.
• Phone: dial 311 within Calgary, or use the local number published by the City when calling from elsewhere.

What to have ready before you submit

A request that gets actioned quickly is one a city crew can locate and verify without calling you back. Before you submit, gather:

• The exact location — a street address, the nearest intersection, or a map pin. "Somewhere on 16th Ave" is effectively unfindable.
• A short, literal description of the problem — what is wrong and what it affects.
• When you first noticed it, and whether it is ongoing or intermittent. This matters for noise and bylaw complaints in particular.
• Photos, where relevant. A picture of a pothole with a visible landmark resolves most location ambiguity.
• Your contact details, if you want follow-up or need to be reachable for an inspection.

What happens after you submit

Submitting a request creates a service record and routes it to the responsible department or business unit. Depending on the issue, the outcome is a crew dispatched to inspect and repair, a bylaw officer assigned to investigate, or an informational reply.

Requests are prioritised — safety-critical issues such as a water main break or a downed traffic signal are handled on a very different timeline than a cosmetic complaint. You can generally follow up on an existing request by referencing it rather than filing a duplicate.

When 311 is the wrong number

This is where misrouted requests cost people real time. A few categories are common enough to call out explicitly:

• Any emergency, fire, or medical situation — call 911.
• Crimes in progress, and non-urgent police matters — contact the Calgary Police Service rather than 311.
• Electricity outages and electrical emergencies — these fall to the utility provider, not the City.
• Natural gas odours or gas emergencies — contact the gas utility immediately; a gas smell is an emergency, not a 311 ticket.
• Provincial services such as health care, driver licensing, and provincial benefits — these are provincial, not municipal.

Common mistakes that slow a request down

• Filing the same issue repeatedly. Duplicates split the record and can reset the location history.
• Reporting a problem on private property. The City generally cannot act on private land; that is a property owner matter.
• Leaving the location vague, which forces a call-back before anything can be dispatched.
• Using 311 for an emergency, which routes a time-critical problem into a queue.