Photograph by: Handout, City of Iqaluit
Baffin Island traffic jams — a once unimaginable phenomenon — are sparking serious debate in Iqaluit, the fast-growing capital of Nunavut. A key outpost on Canada's northern frontier, Iqaluit is already the flashpoint for a host of big-ticket issues, ranging from Arctic sovereignty and climate change to aboriginal rights and intergovernmental relations.But the city's 7,000 residents are currently wrestling with that most parochial of political issues, one familiar to communities everywhere across southern Canada: whether to combat downtown traffic backups by installing a stoplight — the first ever in Nunavut — at Iqaluit's busiest intersection.
If municipal councillors approve the controversial, $400,000 proposal to replace the English-Inuktitut stop signs at the "Four Corners" — the principal cross-street in the territorial hub — the only set of traffic lights in a jurisdiction twice the size of Ontario could be operational by early next year. "We have a 15-minute rush hour, and unfortunately for some, it's too much now," Iqaluit mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik told Canwest News Service, lamenting how traffic congestion — at morning, lunchtime and 5 p.m. — has become an unwelcome sign of prosperous times. "What used to take two minutes to get from point A to point B, because of congestion in that area, is now taking five-plus."
Michele Bertol, Iqaluit's director of planning and lands, said a preliminary study by an Ontario-based consultant concluded that a stoplight was the best solution. "The traffic count reveals that when they plug in the formula for how you calculate whether traffic lights are warranted, the numbers demonstrate that yes — we meet the test," says Bertol. "They said they also looked at another option — a roundabout — but the footprint of the roundabout doesn't fit within our existing road right-of-way. The urban fabric in that area is too tight."
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Don Quixote Note: Iqualuit will be debating during upcoming budget deliberations whether the City will have to hire a TDM Manager. And everywhere our former Inspector McVarnock goes another roundabout rears its head.
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