Iqaluit’s automobile epidemic promises to get worse

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — The good news is that the elements of a public transit system — communal taxis and a bus service for the handicapped — are already in place in Iqaluit.

But unless it can be developed and improved, the head of Canada’s leading transportation lobby group warned this week that rising demand for cars and trucks will eventually cause more than just traffic headaches in the capital of Nunavut.

“The number of cars on a limited road system simply produces congestion. You can four-lane it, you can do whatever you like, but you’re still going to get congestion on ordinary streets,” Harry Gow, president of Transport 2000 said.

Iqaluit’s entire road network is only about 40 kilometres long, but every year it must support more and more motorized vehicles. Since no effective system of metal recycling exists, most cars and trucks brought up from the South end up as eyesores.

As of this month, there were 1,321 registered passenger, commercial and government vehicles operating in Iqaluit, where the population is roughly 4,500.

Those numbers put Iqaluit on par with the rest of the western world when it comes to average cars per capita, Gow said.

“What could be disquieting is that as people go to the second and third car, then it becomes unmanageable.”

Gow says that the town could begin to plan for future growth by improving the existing collective taxi system so that it’s an attractive alternative to more drivers.

At a flat $3.75 per trip, Gow suspects the cost of a cab ride in Iqaluit may still be too high. He suggests the Town could increase ridership through some form of subsidy to select cab companies.

“If you want to reduce the number of private cars, you have to have an incentive, and that’s maybe where the town could contribute — to reducing the fare to a level that would be so competitive with owning a private care that people would say, ‘Why own a car?'”

Subsidizing the service could give the community greater control over the quality of taxi service, too, including the appearance and maintenance of vehicles, Gow said.

“One thing that will hold down the use of taxi riding by prosperous people is if the taxis look like they were meant for use in Bangladesh.”

Elsewhere in Canada where similar systems have been introduced, the establishment of a central dispatch system has decreased overall taxi costs, Gow said.

In Quebec, the province levies a $10 surcharge on all new tire purchases to help pay for the province’s tire-recycling program.

Gow said a similar surcharge could be applied to all new automobile purchases in Nunavut to help pay for cost of crushing and shipping scrap metal to recycling facilities in the South.

Governments and some large private employers in southern Canada have introduced their own measures to reduce employees’ use of private cars in commuting to work.

In Ottawa, Gow said the telecommunications company Nortel reserves special parking areas close to its office for employees who travel in car pools.