bobbob911
Active Member
And we’ll kill this too.
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Billy Bishop Airport Expansion?
- Thread starter hw621
- Start date
And we’ll kill this too.
Tuscani01
Senior Member
Ontario will not take over entirety of Toronto Islands: transportation minister
Ontario will not take over entirety of Toronto Islands: transportation minister
The province says it will not take over the entirety of the Toronto Islands despite the language of its proposed legislation.
www.ctvnews.ca
nfitz
Superstar
Cheap housing with poor noise-proofing?
Perhaps the city could reduce their rent or something (oh hang on ... they might be paying people to live there by then).
generalcanada
Senior Member
People still wont belive him because ford bad i guess. this propaganda will live on forever
Ontario will not take over entirety of Toronto Islands: transportation minister
Ontario will not take over entirety of Toronto Islands: transportation minister
The province says it will not take over the entirety of the Toronto Islands despite the language of its proposed legislation.
Ward8
Active Member
First. The airport has a deleterious effect on the entire waterfront and inner harbour. It is cancerous. It makes accessing the island more difficult, makes the waterfront less enjoyable, and may have an impact on how the waterfront can be developed.
Secondly the airport land can have more uses than a park. Museums, galleries, cultural institutions, and major attractions would be well placed here. I would also argue a certain amount of housing and commercial use would be important as well.
In any case, even if it was simply a larger park, there would be a significant addition to the city via the subtraction of blight and the increased accessibility of the park and waterfront. Accessibility that should be achieved via a streetcar extension on to the island.
I've said this before, but Billy Bishop is ~1km from the CN tower (half that to the central waterfront.) if this was DC, and the Washington monument were the CN tower, the airport would be over the Lincoln Memorial. That would rightly be considered to be an outrageous place for an airport. It would clearly ruin the most important cultural destination in that city, and it does the same to us.
On the flipside we would get the same flight we would otherwise get out of Pearson from a slightly different location.
bobbob911
Active Member
I have limited sympathy for Ward’s Island residents, although I certainly do not begrudge their good fortune for living on the islands.Cheap housing with poor noise-proofing?
Perhaps the city could reduce their rent or something (oh hang on ... they might be paying people to live there by then).
I have a lot more sympathy for the millions and millions of recreational users of our inner harbour and the Toronto islands (both residents and visitors).
I think maybe by your comment you are not a user of our waterfront, and don’t really appreciate how rare it is to have something like this directly next to a major city. It’s unique.
dob467
Active Member
It's really hard to take this transportation minister seriously when repeatedly his public statements on an issue and his legislative actions have so frequently been at odds - bike lanes, the 401 tunnel, the numerous highway expansions, the list goes on. He's regularly said one thing after another to media that doesn't match what's actually being done. Why trust him that the island will be safe just because he says so in a scrum one morning? Has he got the proof to back up that claim?
nfitz
Superstar
There's no need for hyperbolic hysteria.
Spending time on the waterfront, I have no idea how some noise is such a big issue. The noise from road traffic is more annoying!
You are concerned about how Ontario Place is being developed? Do you think there'll be tall buildings there? Do you want tall buildings there?
And less accessible? How? Do you want a bridge at Bathurst - the issue there is the shipping. Do you think they'd have built a pedestrian tunnel if the airport hadn't been there?
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generalcanada
Senior Member
No you misunderstand, The transportation minister never lies.
They just always always stand their grant on pointless issues.
Ontario place, bike lanes, 401 tunnel. beer in corner stores. Most of that is being done "at any cost" to fufill their goals
What they say is always what they mean. "We will ban bike lanes" hey you know what they did. They never backed down.
Theres a difference between them being incredibly wrong about traffic impacts and just going back on their word.
Now if you say theyre lying about the noise output of a220s then maybe, but not the land expropriation fight. thats different
Ward8
Active Member
It's not the noise. At least not primarily. It's that an airstrip is taking up the best part and making the rest of it worse. It's a ridiculous use of that land.
nfitz
Superstar
I doubt people are going to stop using the waterfront simply because there's more planes than there used to be.
Please stop with the faux outrage. We've been discussing this for years. You've been here for years. And I keep mentioning that I hear and feel it ... while I'm inside the house with the windows closed!
A waterbody next to a major city ... so rare. I think humans have preferred to build such cities since about 5000 BC.
How is the water in front of Ontario - and the now destroyed Ontario Place the best part? The only possible impact I can see other than noise (and air vibrations) is that the around-the-island boat tours might be slightly longer.
bobbob911
Active Member
The water isn’t the rare part obviously, the huge natural parklands right off shore absolutely are unique.
Increasing air traffic over this parkland is not necessary catastrophic, it’s just directionally backwards. It’s the *opposite* of what we should be doing with the inner harbour. People value this as a destination far more than they value it as a location to fly overtop of.
dob467
Active Member
Looks like the feds are picking up the ball as announced in today's spring economic update according to the Globe:
The update says in another section that the government is looking at changes related to airports.
The document says Ottawa is “assessing opportunities to unlock the full value of airports in support of investments in Canada’s long-term growth, including through alternative models of ownership.”
It also says the government will bring in legislation “to ensure it can obtain the information necessary for a comprehensive evaluation of airport reforms.”
The update says in another section that the government is looking at changes related to airports.
The document says Ottawa is “assessing opportunities to unlock the full value of airports in support of investments in Canada’s long-term growth, including through alternative models of ownership.”
It also says the government will bring in legislation “to ensure it can obtain the information necessary for a comprehensive evaluation of airport reforms.”
Ward8
Active Member
You misunderstand. I'm referencing the land under the airport. The expansion is absurd and a metastasis, but the airport itself is sitting on the prime real estate. This city would be magnitudes better for residents and visitors if Billy Bishop was gone.
nfitz
Superstar
Ah, fair enough. But II 100% disagree.
Though if were ever to close it would certainly be a good place for high-density development - and would make for much better usage of the under-utilized Toronto Islands. It might even let us join Bathurst to Unwin for pedestrians, bikes, and streetcars.