Billy Bishop Airport Expansion?

[micheal_can]

Assuming you mean the public ferry dock, (Jack Layton) that’s like the furthest away from the island possible, resulting in the longest possible bridge.

Tunnel, not bridge, and have a streetcar run through it connecting to Bathurst.

 

[innsertnamehere]

London City airport is not right next to the premiere park space or tourist attractions in London

10K passengers is around 200 small jet flights maybe? Over a 14hr window for landing slots? So that’s a jet taking off or landing every 4 minutes, all day long. Thats the problem.

Thats an average of only 50 passengers a flight? Porters new jets sit 140.. at 90% occupancy that’s 80 flights. And there are 18 operating hours for YTZ, so that’s one every 13.5 minutes.

And as I said, the noise really isn’t an issue in the first place. People were concerned about traffic impacts and my response is that 10,000 people a day actually isn’t really all that much in the grand scheme of things.

People simply vastly overestimate the impact of an expanded YTZ. The reality is that it would look and sound pretty similar to how it already is.

 

[reinventingthewheel]

People simply vastly overestimate the impact of an expanded YTZ. The reality is that it would look and sound pretty similar to how it already is.

And if this is the case then I’d like to see the cost estimate of the expansion. I get the idea a small increase in operations won’t justify it.

At this point no dollar spent by the province is justified with the kinds of cuts they’ve made elsewhere.

 

[bobbob911]

a good report from 2014

https://ontario.transportaction.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Toronto-Isl-Airprt-Safety-Zones-2014-03-24.pdf

 

[generalcanada]

a good report from 2014

https://ontario.transportaction.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Toronto-Isl-Airprt-Safety-Zones-2014-03-24.pdf

ah so thats where the 3km long runway image from nojetsto came from.
Its just a boater height restriction. still sucks. but the ferries are definitely smaller than 18ft

 

[bobbob911]

ah so thats where the 3km long runway image from nojetsto came from.
Its just a boater height restriction. still sucks. but the ferries are definitely smaller than 18ft

Are they? They are two stories plus a pilot house, I would think they are at least 25ft, not including any antenna

 

[txlseries4]

Shawn Micallef: Doug Ford is showing contempt for Toronto over Billy Bishop airport. Why won’t Olivia Chow — or anyone — fight back?

Residents of Toronto were not publicly consulted over the provincial premier’s decision to take over the island airport to make way for jets.

www.thestar.com

Shawn Micallef with a passionate column about the expansion, lack of public input, and asks, about the 1.5 million visitors to the island each year, “Who will stand up for them? The mayor? Liberals? The rest of our weak and feckless establishment?”

 

[Ward8]

There are lots of cities with very urban airports - London, Toronto, San Diego, Pheonix, Boston, Mexico City, Rotterdam, Washington DC

If one were to accpt this list as analogos to Billy Bishop, which I don't, it would still be a small list. Downtown airports are rare becuase airports are accepted as a poor use of ones most valuble space. London City would have to be somewhere near Waterloo Station is to be comperable. Pheonix isn't in the way of anything getting built, Rotterdam is literally on the edge of town, as is Mexico City.

How many real negative externalities though? the airport has never particularly bothered me on the waterfront. The Gardiner has a far larger noise and pollution impact on downtown from my experience.. and at the end of the day, it's the downtown of one of the largest cities on the continent, the expectation shouldn't be peace and quiet.

If this were a choice between two forms of an airport you'd have a point, but this should be a debate about the opportunity cost of wasting the island on the least efficent form of land use possible. I'd love to see the board of trade do a study on the value add of actually putting that land to a better more efficient use. I'd wager theres a more valuble option than bumping out the runways.

Exact distances are nitpicking, but YTZ isn't right downtown either. It's 2km away. Yes, Reagan is 4km.. it's terminal is on the far side from downtown so travel times are longer, but in terms of location it's runways get as close as 3 kilometres from the central parts of DC.

YTZ is less than 2km from Union Station, and about 1.3Km from the CN tower. Regan is closer to 3Km away from where the island airport would be. If the CN tower was the washington monument, this would be akin to building a runway over the Lincoln memorial. What is the opportunity cost to D.C of kneecapping the National Mall? Thats what were doing here.

But as long as we’re dreaming, why not gondolas from the Scarborough Bluffs?

Jokes aside, a Gondola from exhebition station to Ontario place, to Toronto Island (were the airport part of it) to a connection with the Bathurst car, isn't the most outlandish thing in the world.

 

[ear2ear]

Selfishly, part of what makes the Toronto Islands great is that the access is limited. If/when there were to be a bridge, there would be hordes of people on the island and the magic would be gone.

Practically, people don’t understand that you can’t just build a fixed bridge over the Eastern/Western gaps, it would have to swing or raise for very large cargo ships to get in and out. And because the bridge has to be on one end or the other ;(it ain’t gonna be from Harbourfront to Center Island), you have the secondary problem of transit or car congestion at both of those remote locations.

All of which is to say, if the issue is ferry cost, subsidize the pricing more. If the issue is allowing more people to be on the islands on a given day, sorry but No.

Not to get too off topic, but I don't think this argument helps our anti-expansion case. Celebrating exclusivity feeds into the same line of thinking that eventually denigrates island residents: the idea that the whole island is just a fancy park for a small few. If we instead imagine the island as a refuge for all of us, wasting so much land on a mediocre airport is harder to justify.

Also, I do think a pedestrian/cyclist (floating?) swing bridge across the Eastern gap is within the realm of possibility, and the existing Cherry St. bridge demonstrates some of that viability.

 

[picard102]

London City airport is not right next to the premiere park space or tourist attractions in London

Are we pretending that there is no airport next to Hanlan's right now using planes far more disruptive than the jets proposed?

 

[generalcanada]

Are they? They are two stories plus a pilot house, I would think they are at least 25ft, not including any antenna

Cant find any info on their height, but im sure its fine. What i meant was the 3km "runway" posted by nojetsto was simply the marine exclusion zone as currently exists right now.
Transport action did find issues where it extends all the way to ontario place, but i dont see that being a massive deal.

 

[bobbob911]

If one were to accpt this list as analogos to Billy Bishop, which I don't, it would still be a small list. Downtown airports are rare becuase airports are accepted as a poor use of ones most valuble space. London City would have to be somewhere near Waterloo Station is to be comperable. Pheonix isn't in the way of anything getting built, Rotterdam is literally on the edge of town, as is Mexico City.

I could not agree with you more. NYC doesn’t have a “tiny convenient urban airport” in Central Park either, which is the most direct analogy to Billy Bishop.

If this were a choice between two forms of an airport you'd have a point, but this should be a debate about the opportunity cost of wasting the island on the least efficent form of land use possible. I'd love to see the board of trade do a study on the value add of actually putting that land to a better more efficient use. I'd wager theres a more valuble option than bumping out the

Careful - that kind of thinking might lead to hotels and Ferris wheels on the islands. The best use of the islands is as a natural park to the greatest extent possible. I would allow the return of the live “Diving Horse” show and that’s it

Jokes aside, a Gondola from exhebition station to Ontario place, to Toronto Island (were the airport part of it) to a connection with the Bathurst car, isn't the most outlandish thing in the world.

I mean, it would be cool, but how could it possibly be a more efficient people mover than the ferries?

 

[bobbob911]

Not to get too off topic, but I don't think this argument helps our anti-expansion case. Celebrating exclusivity feeds into the same line of thinking that eventually denigrates island residents: the idea that the whole island is just a fancy park for a small few. If we instead imagine the island as a refuge for all of us, wasting so much land on a mediocre airport is harder to justify.

Also, I do think a pedestrian/cyclist (floating?) swing bridge across the Eastern gap is within the realm of possibility, and the existing Cherry St. bridge demonstrates some of that viability.

The Toronto Islands are a park for everyone in the city. It is neither difficult nor expensive to get to the islands. Certainly, it’s cheaper to go to the islands than it is to fly on Porter airlines!

What they are not, and should never be, are a park for everyone to go to *all at once*

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “floating swing bridge”. And it doesn’t solve for how people get to Cherry St in large volumes. The cost to park over there will be more than the ferries!

 

[dob467]

There are lots of cities with very urban airports - London, Toronto, San Diego, Pheonix, Boston, Mexico City, Rotterdam, Washington DC... and for a lot of those, it's their primary airport not a secondary field. I really don't think it's a fair characterization, and for a lot of those cities it's viewed as a huge benefit to have easy access to an airport from the downtown. There is a reason London City has grown as it has over the years and why even airports like Chicago Midway or Ronald Reagan in Washington can be so successful - proximity.

I think it's importan

London City airport is not right next to the premiere park space or tourist attractions in London

10K passengers is around 200 small jet flights maybe? Over a 14hr window for landing slots? So that’s a jet taking off or landing every 4 minutes, all day long. Thats the problem.

I wish people would stop comparing Billy Bishop to London City Airport, it's nowhere near central London. People making these comparisons clearly haven't spent much if any time in London.

 

[dob467]

Thats an average of only 50 passengers a flight? Porters new jets sit 140.. at 90% occupancy that’s 80 flights. And there are 18 operating hours for YTZ, so that’s one every 13.5 minutes.

And as I said, the noise really isn’t an issue in the first place. People were concerned about traffic impacts and my response is that 10,000 people a day actually isn’t really all that much in the grand scheme of things.

People simply vastly overestimate the impact of an expanded YTZ. The reality is that it would look and sound pretty similar to how it already is.

Are we pretending that there is no airport next to Hanlan's right now using planes far more disruptive than the jets proposed?

How would access to Hanlans work with the expanded runways? Already ferries, boats and water taxis have a wide berth in place from coming too close to the existing runway. A longer runway would only increase the difficulty in getting to the Hanlans dock.