Rush hour in Nunavut is, for the time being, non-existent, but Iqaluit’s chief municipal enforcement officer Kevin Sloboda says most Iqalummiut

With 300 new cars a year, Iqaluit's streets get busier

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2023-05-25 06:30:04

Rush hour in Nunavut is, for the time being, non-existent, but Iqaluit’s chief municipal enforcement officer Kevin Sloboda says most Iqalummiut are familiar with “rush minute.”

“Everyone goes home at once. Everyone goes to work at once. It just seems to be one of those things stagnating your traffic flow, so you get these mass congestions.”

The isolated city of about 7,000 people has no stop lights, and no roads to any other town, but still, about 300 new vehicles hit Iqaluit’s streets each year. There are now about 5,500 registered vehicles in Iqaluit. The territory as a whole has about 8,900.

“The number of vehicles definitely is increasing,” says Waguih Rayes, general manager of the sealift company Degagnes Transarctik.

“It’s becoming a problem for us in terms of shipping because we cannot stack vehicles. We can stack containers, so we put vehicles in containers and this unfortunately increases the cost.”