NT: NT 8 extension to Tuktoyaktuk

[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]

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.

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.

[oscar]

Muchas gracias.  Could I please get from you the shapefile coordinates for where the new highway peels away from Navy Rd., so I can avoid using Google coordinates for that junction? That would be pretty close to my guesstimate of the Inuvik community boundary, which I probably should discard.

Also, there are a pair of side roads from Navy Rd. about 1.5 mile north of the junction with NT8, which I see in Google satellite view but not Mapnik. Any info on the name of one or both those roads, and the coordinates of that intersection? I might want to use (and claim) that point, if I take NT 10 down to the NT8 junction. I know I passed those roads when I was in Inuvik, but they were in use for military exercises so I didn't feel like investigating further while I was there. One of them looks like a possible entrance to the former ice road to Tuktoyaktuk, though the official south end of that ice road (and the still-existing one to Aklavik) is south of downtown Inuvik. 

The coordinates you provided for the north end of route 10 are not far south from my eyeball of the Tuk community boundaries. The ones for where PLACENAM changes to Tuk look to be about 10 miles south of my guesstimate of the community boundary, and 13 miles south of the hamlet centre -- way too far south to be plausible.

[yakra]

LOL, I'm having too much fun with this...
The "Northwest Territories, unorganized" segment contains 70862 points. No way in Hades am I loading the whole thing into WPTedit at once.
I did look at a few segments of ~1000-2000 points each. Where Google satellite imagery is available, north of about  here, the shapefile trace is an exact match. Elsewhere, Google's route is way off, possibly the result of guesswork on the part of the person who did the editing. Mapnik parallels the shapefile trace fairly closely, but is still off a bit.
Load these coords into WPTedit and see how far apart Google and Mapnik are here.

I'll offer to GISplunge the route file you've worked out.

Muchas gracias.  Could I get from you the shapefile coordinates for where the new highway peels away from Navy Rd., so I can avoid using Google coordinates for that junction?

4567-70862 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.418030&lon=-133.774906

Also, there are a pair of side roads from Navy Rd. about 1.5 mile north of the junction with NT8, which I see in Google satellite view but not Mapnik. Any info on the name of one or both those roads, and the coordinates of that intersection?

Is this the one you mean?
4910-17 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.389454&lon=-133.764538
No luck on any street names; none are available north of Muskrat Rd (save for Navy Rd itself) until Tuk.

Speaking of street names & Navy Rd, L_STNAME_C & R_STNAME_C both change from "Navy Road" to "None" here. Take from that what you will.

One of them looks like a possible entrance to the former ice road to Tuktoyaktuk,

Just a small river port, I think. Compare the satellite view, vs. the actual entrance

though the official south end of that ice road (and the still-existing one to Aklavik) is south of downtown Inuvik.

What's really cool (Edit: hey wait, is that a pun? That's a pun, isn't it.) is that these ice roads are included in the shapefiles. The ice road to Tuk was in the 9.0 shapefiles, gone in 10.0; the one to Aklavik is still there.
These were fun to look at in WPTedit. Follow the route in BingSat view, and you can see chunks of the ice road breaking up in the spring thaw.

Code: [Select]

5391-302 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.286840&lon=-134.693910
5391-303 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.284850&lon=-134.693100
5391-304 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.281530&lon=-134.691399
5391-305 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.279980&lon=-134.692209
5391-306 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.278020&lon=-134.695249
5391-307 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.276440&lon=-134.700109

Code: [Select]

5391-282 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.310640&lon=-134.687990
5391-283 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.309800&lon=-134.686260
5391-284 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.308500&lon=-134.685570
5391-285 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.306140&lon=-134.686000
5391-286 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.303770&lon=-134.687400
5391-287 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.301800&lon=-134.690170

Code: [Select]

5391-265 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.335150&lon=-134.663880
5391-266 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.333580&lon=-134.665200
5391-267 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.331610&lon=-134.665340
5391-268 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.327670&lon=-134.664350
5391-269 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.325320&lon=-134.664310
5391-270 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.323800&lon=-134.665930
5391-271 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.322490&lon=-134.668569
5391-272 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=68.321240&lon=-134.673290

[oscar]

RTNUMBER1 = 10 until here.

One last question: is that the northern end of the shapefile, or does it extend north into Tuktoyaktuk, such as perhaps the junction with Beaufort Dr. here?

Thanks for the info in your later post. I don't see a need to do a GISPlunge or other extraction of shapefile data to cover the vast area between the northern fringes of Inuvik and the southern fringes of Tuktoyaktuk. There appear to be no intersections warranting visible points (maybe some side roads to gravel pits, or the restroom trailer used by dignitaries traveling the road for the opening ceremonies), especially since nobody lives there. I've already worked out shaping points using the Mapnik trace, as it weaves around and between lakes. Since shaping points are not a high-precision exercise (so long as we stay within the waypoint editor's lateral tolerance lines), no need to improve on what we have on hand.

[yakra]

RTNUMBER1 = 10 until here.

One last question: is that the northern end of the shapefile, or does it extend north into Tuktoyaktuk, such as perhaps the junction with Beaufort Dr. here?

The road itself is shown to extend to Beaufort Dr.
North of the aforementioned point, RTNUMBER1 = "None", rather than 10.

[oscar]

OK. I'll submit a pull request later this week to add NT 10, between the point north of Inuvik where the new highway peels away from the (old) Navy Rd. -- rather than the end of NT 8, even though the shapefile has that as the south endpoint -- and where the shapefile indicates that NT 10 ends at the approximate location of the Tuktoyaktuk municipal boundary. That will leave gaps of about three miles between the end of NT 8 and the beginning of NT 10, and the end of NT 10 and the road connection with the Tuktoyaktuk street network. But those endpoints seem most consistent with the legal definition of NT 10, even though the shapefile seems to disagree about the south end.

All of this is subject to revision as more info comes in. Unless a local resident or trucker, or one of the dignitaries at the opening ceremony, claims on TM a clinch of NT 10 before winter sets in (Tuk is already in 24-hour darkness, and tomorrow Inuvik will have its last sunset this year), I doubt anybody will be claiming travels on NT 10 anytime soon. But I might fly up there next summer, and do a field check.

We don't have any verification of route markers in the field (I've viewed just about every video available about the new highway). But GNWT publicizes the route designation, including on its highway conditions map. I would not wait for confirmation of route signage.

[yakra]

Moved from "6-Month+ Outlook" to "Updates to Highway Data".

Per more recent developments, this can be marked as solved, right?