From city councillors, a yellow light for Four Corners fix

Pedestrians and cars navigate a busy Four Corners intersection in this April, 2007 file photo. City council heard a pitch this past Tuesday for traffic fixes for Apex Road, including proposed streetlights for the Four Corners intersection. (FILE PHOTO)

Iqaluit is inching closer to installing Nunavut’s first-ever set of traffic lights at the Four Corners intersection.

City staff are pitching a string of traffic fixes stretching from Four Corners to the hospital, with a proposed cost of nearly $600,000.

“We are experiencing traffic congestion at the Four Corners,” said Michele Bertol, Iqaluit’s director of planning and lands, in an interview. “The reality is, in the last few years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of vehicles and this increase will continue.”

Lunchtime and rush-hour snarls are common at Four Corners, so the city wants to install a set of traffic lights and left turn lanes at the downtown intersection. They’d be accompanied by an eastbound left-turn lane at the intersection of Saputi and Apex roads, and left-turn lanes where the hospital parking lot and Queen Elizabeth Way intersect Apex Road.

Dave Banks, a consultant with the traffic planning firm, iTrans, said the lights would change every 30 seconds, which would cut down on wait times for pedestrians.

Banks said planners also considered a roundabout for the Four Corners intersection, at a cost of about $1 million.

Roundabouts are back in favour with traffic gurus because they slow traffic down and virtually eliminate head-on and t-bone collisions. But Banks said there simply isn’t enough room at Four Corners for such a fix.

“We’ve looked at different ways to try and make it fit and it just can’t work, unfortunately,” he said.

But councillors were skeptical about the need for traffic lights.

“It doesn’t take longer to drive to work than to walk, so congestion can’t be that bad,” said Coun. Glenn Williams, who wondered if Four Corners traffic jams are worth spending nearly $500,000 to fix.

Coun. David Alexander said the plan is too expensive. “I don’t want to increase taxes because of this,” he said.

Two years ago, the city mulled over a plan that would have seen the construction of traffic lights at Four Corners and the hospital. It would also have featured a bypass connecting the Federal Road area with Apex Road.

Bertol said the bypass plan is still on the table, though the city still can’t afford the million-dollar-plus price tag. And she said the latest study shows traffic isn’t heavy enough in front of the hospital to warrant traffic lights.