Iqaluit councillors look at removing boulders, posts from city streets

Boulders and posts compete with pedestrians and vehicles for space along the roads in Iqaluit. (PHOTO BY SAMANTHA DAWSON)

Large boulders and posts placed along many Iqaluit streets as a way to improve public safety may soon be a memory.

That’s after councillors approved a motion May 7 at an Engineering and Public Works Committee of the Whole meeting to request a legal opinion from the city’s lawyer on the removal of the roadside obstacles.

Even though the boulders and wooden posts were put in for pedestrian safety, the posts and boulders along walkways complicate the work of road crews in Iqaluit.

Keith Couture, the city’s public works director, said he looks forward to the day they can be removed.

And, if his proposal to rebuild the city’s road system in the next five years works out, Couture might be able to do just that.

“We have no definition of what is a sidewalk,” said Couture during the May 7 council committee meeting. “Between a rock and a post is a sidewalk. There’s no hard surface on the sidewalk — basically they’re just a quagmire [of sand] or dust.”

Couture said improvements must start with plans to build a system for water run-off. That includes a plan to elevate roads, and building elevated sidewalks with the roads as a way to direct water.

“There will be a differential there to allow us to start calling a ditch, which we need,” Couture told the committee — all of whose members are city councillors.

Elevated sidewalks would make it easier to clear snow from than walkways lined by boulders and posts, Couture said.

Irregularly shaped and distributed, the boulders routinely damage city equipment, he said.

As for the posts, these are also difficult because there is too little space between them for side-loading city vehicles to do their work.

Installed by the city in response to a coroner’s report, the wood and rock barriers were put in place to protect pedestrians from wayward traffic.

In the early 2000s the Nunavut coroner’s office recommended that three deaths would not have occurred “had there been some blockage on the sidewalks, where people walk,” said Couture. Also in the early 2000s, urban planners used boulders and posts in design plans for the city.

But, despite past purposes, several city councillors were quick to point out that boulders can be hazardous to vehicles if they are moved out of place, and neither of the barriers allow vehicles to park just off roadsides.

Coun. Mark Morrissey questioned whether the city would be open to liability if it removed all rocks and posts. Neither Couture nor any of the committee members could answer. Couture added he was sure 30 to 40 per cent of the posts and boulders could be removed without any impact on safety.

“I think there was just an overkill in some of these areas” where the obstacles were placed, he said.

The discussion prompted Coun. Kenny Bell to table a motion that city council request a legal opinion from the city’s lawyer on the removal of the roadside obstacles, which was carried.