Are these people totally nuts? They don't need an expensive traffic light, they need a roundabout. You know, a traffic circle, and you have to yield to oncoming traffic. Is it April Fools already?
This place has 700 taxpayers. Most of them I'm sure govt supported. The cost? $400,000. Somebody shoot me. They might get a second hand one though. Just torture me.
High drama in the Arctic: to install or not to install a traffic light
High drama in the Arctic: to install or not to install a traffic light
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News ServiceSeptember 30, 2009
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."
Sheutiapik, who also runs the Grind & Brew, says the problem is clear when she walks from her coffee shop to City Hall near the Four Corners, the intersection of Queen Elizabeth II Way and Niaqunngusiaq Road: "I can pass a bunch of vehicles while they're there waiting."
Currently in the midst of a re-election campaign ahead of an Oct. 19 vote, Sheutiapik says the final decision on the stoplight will be made after a transportation planning report is finalized this fall.
"When you look at the cost associated with it . . . Is it worth it?" she asks. "You know, we're a city of 7,000 but we might have, maybe, 700 taxpayers. So we have to weigh all of those things."
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."
But the stoplight option is proving a hard sell. One Iqaluit councillor, Glenn Williams, questioned the cost at a recent public meeting: "Is it right for us," he was reported asking, "to spend a half a million dollars so I can get home three or four minutes earlier?"
Sheutiapik shares the concern, but says the traffic problem will only intensify as Iqaluit grows to its projected population of 13,000 within 15 or 20 years.
"Since 1999, we've doubled in population," she says. "I remember a few years ago when there were 300 vehicles that came off our giant cargo ships. So that (population) growth has meant a lot of growth in vehicles, as well. And over the past few years, we've paved our roads."
She said critics have proposed a cheaper way to ease the flow of cars through the Four Corners.
"There's some people who think we should have somebody standing there directing traffic instead of a $400,000 traffic light. On the other hand, what are you going to do when it's minus 67 with the windchill factor? Who wants to stand out there directing traffic at minus 67?"
Sheutiapik, only half-joking, suggests another alternative: "There might be a community out there with an old traffic light sitting somewhere that they might want to donate to us."
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
This place has 700 taxpayers. Most of them I'm sure govt supported. The cost? $400,000. Somebody shoot me. They might get a second hand one though. Just torture me.
High drama in the Arctic: to install or not to install a traffic light
High drama in the Arctic: to install or not to install a traffic light
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News ServiceSeptember 30, 2009
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."
Sheutiapik, who also runs the Grind & Brew, says the problem is clear when she walks from her coffee shop to City Hall near the Four Corners, the intersection of Queen Elizabeth II Way and Niaqunngusiaq Road: "I can pass a bunch of vehicles while they're there waiting."
Currently in the midst of a re-election campaign ahead of an Oct. 19 vote, Sheutiapik says the final decision on the stoplight will be made after a transportation planning report is finalized this fall.
"When you look at the cost associated with it . . . Is it worth it?" she asks. "You know, we're a city of 7,000 but we might have, maybe, 700 taxpayers. So we have to weigh all of those things."
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."
But the stoplight option is proving a hard sell. One Iqaluit councillor, Glenn Williams, questioned the cost at a recent public meeting: "Is it right for us," he was reported asking, "to spend a half a million dollars so I can get home three or four minutes earlier?"
Sheutiapik shares the concern, but says the traffic problem will only intensify as Iqaluit grows to its projected population of 13,000 within 15 or 20 years.
"Since 1999, we've doubled in population," she says. "I remember a few years ago when there were 300 vehicles that came off our giant cargo ships. So that (population) growth has meant a lot of growth in vehicles, as well. And over the past few years, we've paved our roads."
She said critics have proposed a cheaper way to ease the flow of cars through the Four Corners.
"There's some people who think we should have somebody standing there directing traffic instead of a $400,000 traffic light. On the other hand, what are you going to do when it's minus 67 with the windchill factor? Who wants to stand out there directing traffic at minus 67?"
Sheutiapik, only half-joking, suggests another alternative: "There might be a community out there with an old traffic light sitting somewhere that they might want to donate to us."
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
