A transportation study looking at existing modes of transportation in the city of Yellowknife found that residents are concerned about unsafe driving conditions on roads and would like to see more walking and biking infrastructure in place.
The findings were presented by Brian Patterson, an urban planner, who told council on Monday that despite the city’s cold climate, its 20 to 30 minute walkability and cycle-ablity circumference translates to “a lot of opportunities.”
Findings suggests city residents in Yellowknife feel the biggest transportation priority is making the city more walkable and accessible for wheelchairs. Over 66 per cent of respondents identified cycling lanes and walking infrastructure as the city’s biggest gap towards addressing roadway congestion.
About 44 per cent of participants say that unsafe driving behaviour was their primary concern when it came to driving on city roads. Unsafe intersections ranked as another top concern for 39 per cent of participants. About 66 per cent of participants say improved walking and cycling infrastructure is their top recommendation for improving driving conditions and road safety.
The urban planning team’s interim report is ready and a summary of the first round of community engagement will be released later this month.
City council’s draft budget has allocated about $900,000 towards transportation infrastructure in the next two years.
Patterson told council on Monday that the plan will extend 25 years, up to 2050 which will align with the community plan period. The transportation plan looks at how to make “all modes of transportation” in the city “safer,” “more welcoming,” and “more inclusive,” explained Patterson.
The modes of transportation that were assessed included driving, public transit buses, walking, cycling and rolling.
Patterson said that currently the project is wrapping up what is called the “discovery” phase in which they have done surveys and other community engagement to assess the transportation situation. This also included examining land use, geographic characteristics, demographic, characteristics and related factors.
The urban planners also examined what other communities have done or are doing with their transportation plans. Patterson reported that so far the team has interviewed about 10 or 11 different cities in the North including Whitehorse, Iqaluit and cities in Alaska.
“We’re really trying to learn from some peer cities around North America and around the world.
Patterson said the first round of community engagement took place between the beginning of September and late October.
The community engagement included interest group meeting, popup booths, a survey and a web page, which had over 1500 views. The project team held two pop-up events which attracted 180 people providing their feedback at community booths. The team also saw some online engagement through an interactive map and a community survey, which attracted significant participation.
Participants were asked to use the interactive map online to identify locations related to their daily travel.
“You could drop pins on at various locations throughout the city to identify specific transportation issues and travel patterns and we had over 130 unique pins on our mapping page,” said Patterson.
The community survey drew over 160 responses. A youth survey was also launched later in the process, because researchers noticed that youth engagement was low in the general survey.
“We wanted to hear from children themselves. So we launched a youth survey and had 55 respondents to that survey,” said Patterson.
“And we also held a household travel survey. So this is a statistically significant representative survey of Yellowknife households to really understand travel patterns. So understanding how they’re travelling through the community. What mode of transportation, they’re using the purpose of their trips, the length of their trips. And so that’ll provide really valuable information as we develop the plan,” added Patterson.
The household survey attracted significant participation.
“For 700 responses to that survey, which is about 9 per cent of all households in Yellowknife, which is great. That actually exceeded what we were hoping for with the household travel survey. ”
Patterson said that over 70 per cent of survey respondents lived in the downtown, Frame Lake South Forest Drive area and Old Town, and most were between 25 and 54 years old.
The survey askes questions about whether people experienced any limitations or disabilities that impacted their mobilities.
“About 10 percent of respondents identified having some sort of limitation that impacted their mobility throughout the community. So two of the initial questions in the survey were kind of asking really about why transportation is important and what are your priorities for transportation.”
Patterson reported that walking was seen as the top priority.
“We heard that walking was the highest priority from survey respondents followed by cycling and transit.”
The researchers found that improving road safety was the number one reason why people think transportation is important, followed by improving public health and providing more transportation choices. Reducing transportation costs and reducing travel times and congestion was identified as the least important outcome, according to survey respondents.
“Looking at kind of a snapshot of transportation in Yellowknife today, some kind of key facts and findings about the community, in general, show some potential opportunities and challenges. I think a real unique opportunity is just the compact rrban form that Yellowknife has. The urban developed area is quite compact which helps encourage especially walking and cycling,” said Patterson.
“A large portion of the city is within a half hour walk of city hall or downtown. So, that creates a lot of opportunities. It’s a really walkable community. Distances are generally quite short and similarly, for biking as well. You could really bike all ends to and from the, or throughout the city within a 30 minute cycling distance,” Patterson added.
The compactness of the city “creates a lot of opportunity”in developing the transportation plan and in finding was of “building on the compact urban form,” he told Council.
The researchers examined existing pedestrian infrastructure throughout the city, including multi-use pathways, sidewalks and crossings located within the city.
“And overall, when we look at sidewalk coverage, sidewalks are provided on about half of all streets within the city and we see greater coverage across downtown and in many residential areas,” said Patterson.
Some gaps were observed within the sidewalks on local streets, whereas most of the collector and arterial streets were found to have sidewalks on at least one side of the street.
Some of the sidewalks and multi-use pathways were found to be too narrow.
“We were able to map out the width of sidewalks and actually most sidewalks are below 1.8, metres in width. And 1.8 metres is an important number that’s kind of the minimum width that you would want for two people in a mobility aid to be travelling side by side. So it’s kind of a best practise to try and have sidewalks that are at least 1.8 metres wide. So that’s kind of a goal. We’ll be aiming for and there’s an opportunity maybe to to approve that or making sure that new sidewalks are built to that standard moving forward,” said Patterson.
Another issue the research identified was the way intersections and crossings are built, pose “significant” challenges for people with disabilities and safety issues. Some intersections lacked crosswalks.
Survey respondents identified different barriers to walking. The top barriers identified focussed on personal safety from concerns about crime to lack of pedestrian facilities., with pedestrian facilities being in “poor condition or uneven.”
Another safety concern was walking next to streets busy with vehicle traffic.
The study also identified that there is a lack of comprehensive cycling networks for travel to get around the city.
Patterson said that planners want to focus on cheating cycling infrastructure which is “comfortable” and accessible for people of all ages and abilities. The plan is to focus on building facilities that are physically separated from vehicle traffic.
“So things like multi-use pathways or protected by (physical barriers) as opposed to just painted on street bike lanes.”
Chris Greencorn, the city’s director of Public Works and Engineering told council the transportation plan has an allocation of approximately $900,000 for 2026 and 2027 in the draft budget. The exact amount of funding will be decided by discussed at council in December.
“Where and how we allocate that and and that amount still Remains to be deliberated in December,” added Greencorn.
