Transportation Plan

Let’s Move YK is about creating a Transportation Plan that suits the needs of the community. The plan will bring together past studies, strategies, and policies with new ideas and standards, creating a single, unified roadmap for Yellowknife’s transportation network. This plan will help the City move forward with investments in transportation projects for all modes of travel over the next 25 years.  

Its purpose is to make travel safer, more welcoming, and inclusive for all residents. It combines “hard” measures, like infrastructure improvements, with “soft” measures, such as education and encouragement programs, to improve how we move year-round. 

We want the Transportation Plan to reflect the way we move as a community. Let’s Move YK puts people first, considers every mode of travel, and sets a shared direction for moving forward together, ensuring that our transportation network supports the lives, needs, and aspirations of everyone in Yellowknife. 

Transportation decisions impact our community’s health, safety, environment, and economy. Today, our transportation system needs to evolve to keep pace with population growth, rising demand, shifting community priorities, and emerging technologies. Since Yellowknife is a winter city, we also need to make sure that our transportation system is reliable and accessible all year round. We want to make sure we plan for everyone to move around in a way that meets our unique needs as a northern community.  

Let’s Move YK will be a comprehensive guide to improving transportation across the City.

The plan will:

• Prioritize infrastructure projects for the short, medium, and long term 
• Identify supporting programs and policies  
• Align and coordinate the City’s many transportation-related plans and policies to make sure they are consistent and integrated in a single document 
• Provide a clear roadmap for how we want to improve our roads, sidewalks, bike routes, trails, transit, parking access and more
• Include a long-term vision to guide the City’s decision-making, along with an action plan to help the City move forward

Round Two Engagement: Early 2026

The next round of engagement will be taking place in winter 2026. The Yellowknife community will be invited to review and provide feedback on the draft Transportation Plan, before it is finalized.

Details about these events will be announced once they are confirmed. In the meantime, general inquiries about the Transportation Plan can be emailed to letsmoveYK@yellowknife.ca.

How will your input be used?

Engagement for this project will occur at the Inform and Consult levels on the International Association of Public Participation’s Spectrum of Public Participation. Your feedback will be used to help identify and prioritize the recommendations in the Transportation Plan. It will be used along with technical analysis, best practices reviews, safety protocols, and responsible budgeting to help create a plan that works for our community. At the end of the project, the project team will demonstrate how feedback was used to influence final decisions.

Round One Engagement took place in September and October 2025. These events included a community survey, household survey, pop-ups events, and roundtable meetings with community groups. A summary of What We’ve Heard from Round One of Public Engagement, along with interim project reports on Moving in Yellowknife today, and Best Practices and Jurisdictional scan, are now available.

We aren’t starting from scratch. We’ve already heard a lot from Yellowknifers about transportation through the Community Plan Comprehensive Update, Climate Action Plan, and other initiatives in recent years. We want to build on the input we’ve already heard and learn more about your experience travelling through Yellowknife to ensure our recommendations meet the needs of our community.

From recent planning initiatives, we have heard that:

1. There is broad support for following actions:

• Partnering with other levels of government on incentives for active transportation like bicycles, e-bikes, secured bike storage, and charging outlets
• Bike-share programs and micromobility options
• Developing an EV charging infrastructure strategy

2. Community members want to protect and enhance the walkability of the community (trail connections and sidewalk improvements).

3. There is a desire for safer and more convenient cycling infrastructure year-round (with proper maintenance and snow clearing).

4. There are concerns regarding excessive traffic speeds and non-compliance with traffic regulations.

We know there have already been a lot of conversations about transportation in our community. This project will help put together the pieces of the puzzle to get a big picture view on issues and opportunities to improve our resource planning and investments.

Phase 1: Launching (COMPLETE)

• Collect and review background data
• Conduct a gap assessment

Phase 2: Discovering (COMPLETE)

Engagement Round 1 (community and household travel survey, pop-ups, roundtable meetings)

• Policy review and equity analysis
• Existing conditions report
• Jurisdictional scan and best practices review
• Traffic operational analysis

Phase 3: Planning

• Transportation network mapping
• Design standards, micromobility, speed limit, and parking reviews
• Engagement Round 2 (community survey, pop-ups, roundtable meetings)

Phase 4: Prioritizing

• Transportation infrastructure projects list
• Draft and final Transportation Plan

Get in touch

For general inquiries about Let’s Move YK – Transportation Plan, email letsmoveYK@yellowknife.ca.