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NT: NT 8 extension to Tuktoyaktuk

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oscar:
As mentioned on the AARoads forum, the new all-season highway from Inuvik to the Arctic coast at Tuktoyaktuk is scheduled to open November 15, 2017.

Still need to wait for the new highway to be mapped in OSM/Mapnik (including where it peels away from existing Navy Road north of Inuvik), and official confirmation (in territorial regulations or otherwise) that it will be added to NT 8.

oscar:
Update: The new highway opened on schedule. However, NT's newly-amended official route designation regulations indicate the highway will not be treated as an extension of NT 8 or the Dempster Highway. The highway will instead be NT 10, and named the "Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway". See page 4 of the regulations (unchanged definition of NT 8/Dempster Highway) and page 8 (definition of the new highway).

No clue about why the new highway was numbered 10, skipping over 9 (not assigned to any other highway in the newest regulations).

Also, the route definition suggests that there will be a short gap between NT 8 and NT 10, and that the north end of NT 10 will fall short of Beaufort Dr. in Tuktoyaktuk where online maps indicate the new highway ties into the Tuktoyaktuk street network. Photos from the opening ceremonies indicate that the new highway starts at Muskrat Rd. in Inuvik, two long blocks north of the north end of NT 8. However, Inuvik official maps suggest that the city limit is somewhere north of Muskrat Rd., perhaps at an unnamed road to Inuvik's Top of the World shooting range, shown on satellite imagery but not on Mapnik, GM, Bing, or other online maps.

Unknown also is whether the new highway has or will have posted route number markers. Since there was only one reassurance marker for NT 8's entire 170 mile length when I drove to Inuvik in 2012, route number signage for the new highway is probably not going to be a high priority. Bigger priority probably should be delineators along the side of the road, or other reflectorization, to help drivers stay on the road at night -- next sunrise in Tuktoyaktuk won't be until January, and Inuvik's last sunrise for this year will be on December 6.

I have a draft route file almost ready to go, once I can nail down the endpoints. (There will be a visible distance error of about 85 miles, since there's no intersecting roads except perhaps to gravel pits, or anything else, between the outskirts of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.) But no hurry to add it to our NT route set.

yakra:

--- Quote ---However, Inuvik official maps suggest that the city limit is somewhere north of Muskrat Rd., perhaps at an unnamed road to Inuvik's Top of the World shooting range, shown on satellite imagery but not on Mapnik, GM, Bing, or other online maps.
--- End quote ---
This road is in the shapefiles, connecting to Navy Road here.

The actual municipal boundary, I cannot help you with -- the latest shapefiles, dated 2016-06-16, don't show the new road. Navy Road, at its north end (as still shown in Google & Bing) is entirely within Inuvik, per the shapefiles' L_PLACENAM attribute.

oscar:
I was able to dig up some Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk community boundary maps, from which I was able to eyeball (based on locations of nearby bays and lakes) points for where the boundary line crosses the highway. The Inuvik point is on Navy Road, about 3.5 miles north of the end of NT8, about 2.9 miles north of the beginning of the new highway as stated in its opening ceremonies, 0.13 miles south of where the new highway peels away from Navy Rd. (per Google Maps satellite imagery), and 0.48 miles south of Navy Rd's north end. The Tuktoyaktuk point is about three miles south of the intersection with Beaufort Dr., which is the tie-in to the existing Tuktoyaktuk street network.

This is enough info for me to adjust my draft route file, with the understanding that it will probably need to be tweaked again once online mapping improves or new shapefiles become available. It is also enough to dash my hopes that I had clinched-in-advance any part of the new highway -- when I visited Inuvik in 2012 (before construction started on the new highway), I drove on Navy Road north of NT 8's end, but turned back well before Navy Road's north end since it was getting too muddy and sketchy for me.

yakra:
Just downloaded some new shapefiles, dated 2017-11-29. My last post was just a couple hours too early.
South-to-north:
RTNUMBER1 = 10 all the way down Navy Rd to its junction with NT8.
L_PLACENAM changes from "Inuvik" to "Northwest Territories, unorganized" where the new highway peels away from Navy Rd.
L_PLACENAM changes from "Northwest Territories, unorganized" to "Tuktoyaktuk" here.
It's possible -- likely? -- that this attribute doesn't accurately reflect the actual municipal boundaries.
RTNUMBER1 = 10 until here.

I can't guarantee that RTNUMBER1 is 100% accurate either. But there's the info; take with a grain of salt, and do with it what thou wilt.

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