Long-time City of Calgary executive, former transit director, announces retirement

Another long-serving City of Calgary executive is calling it a career.

Doug Morgan, the city’s acting chief operating officer for city services and general manager of operational services, retired last week, after more than three decades with the municipality.

“The meetings are done, the laptop is closed, and the phone is off,” he wrote on LinkedIn on Friday. “It’s a strange feeling but the right one.”

After obtaining degrees from the University of Calgary in the 1980s, Morgan first joined the city as a transportation engineer in 1995, before transitioning to roles with Calgary Transit in 2006.

He took on roles as manager of transportation data and service design, during which he was responsible for the installation of automated counters on the city’s transit fleet, as well as automated payment systems, manual data collection systems, flow maps and trip generation studies.

Morgan served for seven years as director of Calgary Transit, from 2012 to 2019. Early into his time at the helm of Calgary’s public transportation agency, he featured in an episode of Undercover Boss in 2013.

Following a brief tenure as the city’s general manager of transportation, Morgan took on his most recent role, general manager of operational services, in 2021. The portfolio includes overseeing most frontline city services, including roads, transit, waste and recycling, parks, water services, fleet and facilities.

“I was fortunate to contribute to many important initiatives during my time with the city, including major transit expansions, accessibility improvements, transportation safety measures, and advancements in service delivery,” he wrote in his retirement post. “While I am proud of what we accomplished, those successes were never the work of one person. They were the result of employees, leaders, partners, and elected officials working together on behalf of Calgarians.”

Morgan is the latest in a string of high-profile departures from the city’s executive leadership team announced this year.

In April, after months of speculation, chief administrative officer David Duckworth announced he would depart the city in 2026, with his last day scheduled for Dec. 1.

At the same news conference, chief operating officer Stuart Dalgleish revealed he would retire this June, after a 37-year career with the municipality.