A school bus in Iqaluit with students on board narrowly escapes an accident in the Plateau area Tuesday morning. The roads were slippery enough to prompt the City of Iqaluit to issue a public service announcement urging drivers to be careful on the roads. The announcement said sand trucks were working to improve road conditions after temperatures hovered around freezing overnight, bringing some snow mixed with freezing rain. (Photo by Livete Ataguyuk)
If only there was someone who was responsible for municipal infrastructure like roads, someone who could say… plow them and sand them!
I don’t know about anyone else, but my area was not plowed this morning. Telling motorists to be safer while being negligent in road maintenance is really something.
Roads and sidewalks are as usual insufficiently cleared, or not cleared at all. The city must realize that many people walk “on” the streets because the city has once again failed to clear areas for safe walking. As for the streets and the advise to drive carefully, well do you job first and clear them as much as possible. The weather forecast was out a few days, so this snowfall doesn’t come as a surprise. Keep the snow clearing truck on the road, the whole day.
Fear not! Kyle Sheppard assured us this morning that city trucks had been hard at work since 5am! He did neglect to mention what the trucks were hard at work doing but that’s neither here nor there.
careful now, don’t drink the stinky fuel wadda.
Are we getting worse at Winter?
This very basic snow squall (I know that’s a generous description) was handled VERY poorly. As far as I can tell this weather hasn’t deviated from what was forecast and it’s been snowing all night. But the City trucks, as per Kyle Sheppard’s comments this morning, were out at 5am. What about the five hours prior to that? Why were trucks only sent out at 5?
And then the IDEA is a whole different issue altogether. They close schools for no apparent reason on one day. Then, after catching flak for that, they post passive aggressive comments on Facebook “reminding us” about their policies every time the wind blows. I won’t blame them for today but I’m not going to pretend they wouldn’t have fumbled it if the weather had been properly bad this morning.
I have no issue going to work in inclement weather; I love this stuff. But what I cannot abide is sitting around wasting my own time while the City and GN try to figure out how to be functional organizations.
I guess mother nature is only supposed to di mon-fri and 8am-5pm. South road crews work night or day 7 days a week and should be the same here
I can remember my grandpa COMING HOME from a full shift plowing as I was waiting to get on the bus at 7:00.
This morning, I noticed that the main roads were well sanded and cleared before 8 am, which is commendable considering the ongoing snowfall and windy conditions.
Side streets are typically addressed later in the process.
Despite the city’s efforts, it seems that the rush hour traffic may have negated much of this good work.
I also observed several instances of reckless driving, including speeding into turns, occupying the center of the road, and failure to properly clean vehicle windows before driving.
In my view, the city is doing its best under challenging conditions, and I believe their efforts today were noteworthy.
On the other hand, I was disappointed to see that many landlords and property managers, including Northview, Astro, NCC, and several GN parking lots, had not adequately cleared their premises, which contributed to poor conditions throughout the day.
Let’s all remember to drive safely and considerately, especially under such difficult weather circumstances.
The city of Iqaluit sanded the roads on my neighborhood – thank you – only to have sand ploughed to the side by the city of Iqaluit hours later
Maybe conditions are very different on the ground but most of the communities that are closed today don’t seem to have any good reason to have closed.
How many road crew does the city have, including heavy equipment? Is there any information on this anywhere?
Is it enough? Do we need more or is this a scheduling issue at the garages/city?
It would be interesting to see how many staff the city has to tackle our roads.