Yellowknife starts work on 25-year transportation vision

The City of Yellowknife is embarking on a transportation plan that will “guide how we move around our city for the next 25 years.”

Discussed as a wishlist item by local politicians for years, the plan is designed to cover things like trails, cycle paths, buses and the infrastructure that supports them.

It’s also intended to bring together various older initiatives that weren’t coordinated.

“The City of Yellowknife, over the last 25 or 30 years, has created multiple different plans about bike lanes here, trails here. They’re sort-of dated now, they’re not really knit together. Some contradict each other,” Mayor of Yellowknife Ben Hendriksen told Cabin Radio.

“The whole idea here is to actually knit all of those old plans together – as well as consider all of the information we’ve recently started to collect as part of our climate action plan and our community planning process – and actually come up with a plan that will suit us, fingers crossed, for the next 25 years.”

Hendriksen expects the finished plan to guide city planning from a transportation perspective, on topics such as how people walk or bike between locations and how accessibility is ensured.

“I think particularly about kids, elderly people and people with mobility issues who can’t drive. It’s actually a significant part of the population who aren’t able to drive,” Hendriksen said.

“In Yellowknife, our streets are very wide. There’s a lot of space for everybody to be able to share the space.

“Going forward, it’s about taking those bits of learning of what people do want to see and, on the flip side, what they don’t want to see.”

The plan is not yet formed. The point of the coming months is to get input from residents so consultants Urban Systems can put a draft in front of council before the next municipal election in October 2026.

You can send feedback online until October 3 this year and there are in-person sessions at the farmers’ market and aquatic centre next week. More than 500 households will also be contacted at random to take part in a survey.

“It’s not trying to get people out of a car who don’t want to be. That’s fine. If you want to drive, fill your boots, that’s great,” said Hendriksen, who has long advocated for better walking and cycling infrastructure in Yellowknife, pointing to northern European examples to follow.

The mayor says the plan is instead about ensuring that “if people want to bike or walk or make that change, they actually have that safe option.”

“In a winter city, people feel locked in. They can’t get out and walk because our sidewalks are not maintained great. We’re not always talking about new infrastructure. Sometimes it’s about maintenance of the infrastructure we have, and how do we prioritize those things,” Hendriksen said.

“What I want to see is the community aspect where people can move around safely, whether you’re four years old or 84 years old.”