Iqaluit’s Apex Road to be replaced this summer with gravel surface

The City of Iqaluit’s roads manager Cameron DeLong explains summer plans to resurface Apex Road at a July 25 council meeting. (PHOTO BY BETH BROWN)

The broken surface of Iqaluit’s road to Apex is to be torn up this summer and replaced with a smooth new gravel surface, Iqaluit city councillors heard this past week.

“The surface there is in quite a state,” city roads manager Cameron DeLong said at a July 25 council meeting.

Tenders have yet to go out for the planned update, which falls under the city’s strategic plan, but DeLong said he hopes to see work wrap up by October.

He also confirmed to Nunatsiaq News that the department has no current plan to re-pave the road to Apex.

Instead, what’s left of the existing chip seal—a combination of asphalt and aggregate often used on rural roads— will be removed and replaced with four inches of “quality road base,” DeLong said.

As access to aggregate is limited in the city, four inches of covering is as much as can be laid down without added cost caused by heavy equipment needed to compact the road covering.

“We are challenged with aggregate resources here in town, there’s not a lot of it,” said DeLong.

“It’s by no means a short cut… but it is going to depend on a regular road maintenance program,” he said, adding that the new surface will make regular maintenance more effective.

While weekly grading and maintenance takes place on the road, he said the partially paved surface right now makes levelling potholes a challenge, and one with limited payoff.

“The reality is that maintenance really only lasts about a day, maybe three days tops, and then it has to be graded again,” said DeLong.