Iqaluit Transit acquires 2nd bus, aims for January launch
Company owner working with city to set up bus stop signposts
Iqaluit Transit is looking to launch its service in January as it awaits approval from the city to build bus stop signposts. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
A January launch for a long-awaited privately run bus service in Iqaluit is looking promising, says the owner of the company behind the venture.
Jacinto Marques, who owns Nunavut Marketing, has faced delays launching Iqaluit Transit since he first announced it last year.
“We’re looking to launch on Jan. 19,” he said in an interview.
“We’re very serious about this service and we definitely want to help out the community. This is a long, long time coming, even with the obstacles.”
One of the final steps Marques is working on with the City of Iqaluit is getting permission to set up signposts for stops along the route, which he says will run from the airport to Apex. The specific route and stops are being finalized.
“The proponent is looking to place bus stops and related infrastructure on municipal property, which requires a development permit,” said Geoff Byrne, the city’s spokesperson.
Byrne said it takes four to five weeks for those permits to be approved, but it doesn’t require council’s approval unless a zoning variance is required. In March, city council voted to award Iqaluit Transit a permit to operate a vehicle-for-hire service.
Iqaluit Transit has also acquired a second bus.
The company’s first vehicle is a black, converted school bus. It spent much of this year parked in a lot behind the CBC News building after Nunavut Marketing’s office was destroyed in the Noble House fire in January.
The new bus arrived last month and appears to be similar to city transit buses that are used in the south.
The plan is to use both buses, Marques said.
The new bus has buttons to request the driver to stop and a light-up panel on the front, which Marques said would indicate whether the bus is heading toward the airport or Apex.
“It rides nicely,” Marques said. “It has much more power, it’s much more durable, and it’s very good for the roads up here.”
Nunavut Marketing recently listed a job posting for a bus driver. Marques has been interviewing the many applicants who responded.
With things hopefully rolling forward, he said he is looking to make the launch of the service free for the first two or three weeks before introducing a $5 per ride fare system, and $189 monthly unlimited ride passes.
“We’re working together with the city. Hopefully, those plans [and] those permits are finalized soon,” Marques said.
“Either way, we’re pretty dedicated to launching in January.”
Without a public transit system in Iqaluit, residents who don’t have a car often rely on the city’s taxi companies to get around at a cost of $9.50 per ride.
Iqaluit had a public transit system from 2003 to 2005, but the city closed it due to low ridership.
This is , what kuujjuaq nees , get rid of those over crowded old ones .
january 2040 right?
This is a bigger deal than it looks on the surface. For a city that’s relied entirely on taxis for twenty years, the fact that a private operator is trying to build a functioning transit system from scratch is impressive — and kind of shows how slowly the municipal side moves.
A couple things stand out:
1. The main bottleneck is the city, not the operator.
Marques already has two buses, drivers lined up, and a launch date. What’s holding things up? Approval of basic signposts. Four to five weeks for a development permit just to put poles in the ground is… classic Iqaluit. It’s the same administrative drag that killed the 2003–2005 system — not enough support, not enough structure, not enough clarity.
2. The route makes sense — airport to Apex is the core spine of the city.
If this launches, it immediately becomes useful for workers, students, and people with no vehicle. That’s a huge shift from the current $9.50-per-ride taxi reality.
3. Free rides for the first few weeks are smart.
People in Iqaluit won’t adopt something new unless they can test it with zero risk. It’s how you build ridership and prove the city wrong for saying transit “doesn’t work” here.
4. The new bus sounds like a real urban transit vehicle.
A proper stop-request system, destination panel, and more power for Iqaluit roads? That’s a step above what anyone expected for a private service.
5. The real question is long-term sustainability.
The last system failed due to low ridership, but the city is much larger now than in 2005. Housing density increased, taxi prices went up, and people have been asking for alternatives. The appetite is there — the bureaucracy just isn’t moving at the same pace.
Overall:
This story is a good sign, but it also exposes a familiar pattern — whenever someone in Iqaluit tries to build something practical, the biggest obstacle is never interest or demand. It’s municipal process. If the city follows through on these permits and supports the system instead of quietly dragging it out, this could be the first real improvement to local transportation in decades.
Finally a place to have my Morning Coffee!
Mr. Marques didn’t plan any of this before buying his first bus. He approached this the same way he launched his parcel pickup service assuming he could operate first and sort out requirements later. I was an early Nunavut Marketing customer, and the early chaos there showed the same lack of preparation.
Running transit isn’t as simple as parking a bus and blocking traffic. The City has to ensure stops are safe and compliant. Any serious operator would have lined up permits, locations, and approvals before announcing a launch date.
The reporting also misses key context: the delays aren’t because the City is “slow” they’re because the groundwork wasn’t done. If you plan properly, permitting is built into your timeline. If you don’t, you end up scrambling and pointing fingers.
Until safe stops and approved signage are in place, this isn’t a transit system. it’s an idea that still needs real planning behind it.
You’re giving the City a level of efficiency and clarity that simply doesn’t exist in practice. The development permit for basic signposts alone takes 4–5 weeks — that’s not a sign of an unprepared operator, that’s just how slow the process is here. Anyone who’s dealt with municipal permitting in Iqaluit knows that.
And planning “properly” doesn’t mean you sit on equipment for months while paperwork crawls forward. You buy the buses, line up drivers, finalize routes, and work through approvals in parallel. That’s how small-city transit startups operate everywhere.
The article also makes it clear the groundwork *has* been done: buses purchased, drivers trained, route designed, stop locations identified, and a launch plan in place. The last outstanding piece is the City approving poles in the ground — which isn’t something an operator can speed up, no matter how perfectly they planned.
Past experiences with a parcel service don’t tell us much about a transit rollout in 2025, and they’re not evidence of mismanagement here. The facts in front of us are straightforward: the operator is ready to launch, the demand is there, and the bottleneck is a municipal timeline that moves at the pace everyone in Iqaluit is familiar with.
If the City processes the permits on schedule, the system launches. If they drag it out, we end up repeating the same pattern that stalled previous attempts — not because transit “wasn’t planned,” but because the approval steps never moved.
The CBC video on this same story actually states the opposite of what you’re arguing. They said IQ Transit only submitted the permit applications this month. When you know Iqaluit’s approvals take 4–5 weeks, submitting that late isn’t the City slowing things down; it’s the operator starting the process too close to launch.
Yes, permitting here is slow. That’s exactly why getting applications in early is part of proper planning. Buying buses and training drivers doesn’t change the fact that the paperwork is the gating step, and the clock didn’t start until now.
If the City processes the permits within the standard timeline, that’s not “dragging it out.” The delay comes from when the applications were filed, not from the City’s pace.
Okay ChatGPT, good job.
What a brave endeavour! It could be really good for our city. Thank you to the enterprisers for giving this a shot. Good luck!
I hope they do a route to Sylvia Grinnell in the summer. I want to visit the part more but walking from downtown across the causeway and the driveway in is pretty dull after you done it a few times. Same with walking back from Apex after hiking, or federal road to pick up things at the hub on foot.
Like I like to walk, but maybe now I can spend more time on interesting walks, up in the hill more instead of spending so much time on errands haha. I’m curious to see the routes proposed!
There is so many taxis in town now, I wonder what equilibrium will shake out
I just hope the bus will take away huge business from the Taxi company because Taxy drivers have been very bad, like stealing change, throwing out people in the cold, not wanting to go to APEX and over charging from A to C.
I also hope the drunks will not be allowed on the bus unless they show they are not too intoxicated. If they cost disturbance on the bus while intoxicated, make sure they get banned right away with no warning because next time they may start something crazy if given too many chances.
I can see there will be more buses in the near future because people are so sick of the smelly taxies and Nonsense that come along with it.
Oh yes Bus owner, do not hire any Taxi Drivers or old ex cab drivers because you will defiantly loose your customers right away.
Quit trying to make public transit happen, Iqaluit, it’s not going to happen.
Like everyone else, I really want to see this initiative work. However, I seriously doubt that it will. Iqaluit just isn’t big enough both in terms of space and population for a bus service to break even. Transit services in much bigger cities down south have trouble staying afloat. I give this thing six months at the most.
Absolutely correct. A quick Google search will tell you that Ottawa’s public transit system operates 34% on fares, and 66% on city funding from property taxes. It’s just not a sustainable business by itself, especially in Iqaluit.
Each bus would likely have to operate, at minimum, from 7:30am to 6:00pm on weekdays, which is 52.5 hours per week, plus an additional 12ish hours on the weekends. That’s approximately 6,700 hours a year, more than 3 full-time jobs. Even minimum wage drivers, making $20/hour, are going to cost about $175,000 per year after employer related costs like EI and CPP contributions. And that’s if you can get anybody to drive a bus for minimum wage. Do you want to ride a bus where the driver is making minimum wage?
So that’s $175,000, then you have to factor in gas. Each one of these buses will go through about $600/week, so there’s $65,000.
Now we’re at $240,000, then let’s add in insurance. How much is it going to cost to insure a commercial bus carrying passengers that is on the road 65 hours per week? It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if this amount was $15,000 annually per bus.
Up to $270,000 annual costs. Then there’s maintenance. First of all, what happens when a bus goes down? There’s no backups waiting. So you’re just going to be missing one until it’s back up and running, and I’d bet any parts you need will have to be ordered. Are you going to give your monthly pass holders a discount or refund when this happens? Anyway, this is going to be AT LEAST another $10,000 per bus.
We’re at about $300,000 now, and haven’t even factored in bus depreciation, or profit. Just to ship these busses alone must cost $10,000.
This is going to be at least a $400,000 operating activity. So let’s look at revenue.
You’re going to need to sell 80,000 rides at $5 per ride. That’s 1,540 rides per week, or approximately 24 rides per operating hour. And at that rate, you’re barely making it.
And it’s honestly going to cost even more. New York City says their busses cost $215 per hour to operate. In USD. That would be $1,442,000 USD for 2 busses. San Diego says theirs is only $90/hour, that would $604,000 USD for 2 busses, or $850,000 CAD.
Can you sell 170,000 one-way bus rides in Iqaluit in a year?
That looks more like a city.