Toronto Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport | ?m | ?s | Ports Toronto | Arup

[Kitsune]

Successes and failures of island airport

Re: Island airport success, Editorial, April 28
Excessive noise has been an ongoing problem for residents living along the waterfront and elsewhere in the city. The Toronto Port Authority has acknowledged this through the creation of a noise management committee tasked with mitigation strategies, yet has gone ahead with airport expansion prior to the results of this committee being tabled.

Excessive Noise? Where I live I have a clear view of the island airport, and very rarely (maybe 1 or 2 times a month?) I hear a plane ... and even then the gardiner still drowns it out.

I think next time they are going to protest... we should be getting together a bigger pro-porter crowd to protest the protesters ....

 

[adma]

>>>Once again private greed has won out over the public good.<<<

Transportation infrastructure is a public good.

Yeah, like the Spadina Expressway, which was admittedly less "private greed" than even Porter...

 

[spider]

Being a curious type with lots of time on my hands I decided on Friday to discover just how noisy are these aircraft. My wife and I parked on Stadium Road which is a whole lot closer to the Airport than most Condos and all the complainers on the island.

There was no action when we arrived so I picked up a book as did my wife and we waited for something to happen. About 20 minutes later my wife looked up and asked "is that what we came to see" pointing to a Porter plane just lifting off at the end of the runway. We had to see the plane before we noticed the sound it was making, so little sound that we would have missed it entirely without the visual cue.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Talking about Toronto having all these airports is all bullshit. Truthfully in the World Traveler Map, Toronto is known to have only one airport.

Truthfully, it doesn't matter how many airports we have. What matters is how many airports we can support. Right now, we have a small, expandable regional niche airport whose primary purpose is to serve downtown businesspeople, and a large, international airport that has a comfortable amount of space and runways to expand to whatever size it will balloon to. For those who pooh pooh on Pearson, it really is one of the most luxurious airports on the continent with lots of space, easy transfers, relatively few congestion-related delays and a wonderfully-laid out new terminal. If you think this is inadequate, you should visit O'Hare or Newark or LAX.

Besides, why do you want more than one airport? I bet Londoners would kill for having enough space to build one giant airport with ten runways and 120 million passengers rather than be stuck in the situation they have now with 5 airports, all running out of capacity.

 

[Epi]

Truthfully, it doesn't matter how many airports we have. What matters is how many airports we can support. Right now, we have a small, expandable regional niche airport whose primary purpose is to serve downtown businesspeople, and a large, international airport that has a comfortable amount of space and runways to expand to whatever size it will balloon to. For those who pooh pooh on Pearson, it really is one of the most luxurious airports on the continent with lots of space, easy transfers, relatively few congestion-related delays and a wonderfully-laid out new terminal. If you think this is inadequate, you should visit O'Hare or Newark or LAX.

Besides, why do you want more than one airport? I bet Londoners would kill for having enough space to build one giant airport with ten runways and 120 million passengers rather than be stuck in the situation they have now with 5 airports, all running out of capacity.

You can't build too many runways that close together. It's dangerous if airplanes get tangled from trying to land from all different directions!

 

[gei]

I'm not going to bother reading through the entire 55 pages, so excuse me if this has already been asked...

but am I the only one who kinda enjoys the ferry ride to the airport? To me it adds to the unique experience... and only adds a couple of minutes to the trip time. Building a bridge won't make a difference to me.

 

[Hipster Duck]

You can't build too many runways that close together. It's dangerous if airplanes get tangled from trying to land from all different directions!

Well, the planes aren't getting tangled at Pearson right now, so I don't think we have a capacity problem.

 

[jn_12]

For those interested in seeing an image of the terminal, there is a rendering in this week's Bulletin (which is the harbourfront nimby rag)

 

[Hydrogen]

Truthfully, it doesn't matter how many airports we have. What matters is how many airports we can support. Right now, we have a small, expandable regional niche airport whose primary purpose is to serve downtown businesspeople, and a large, international airport that has a comfortable amount of space and runways to expand to whatever size it will balloon to. For those who pooh pooh on Pearson, it really is one of the most luxurious airports on the continent with lots of space, easy transfers, relatively few congestion-related delays and a wonderfully-laid out new terminal. If you think this is inadequate, you should visit O'Hare or Newark or LAX.

Besides, why do you want more than one airport? I bet Londoners would kill for having enough space to build one giant airport with ten runways and 120 million passengers rather than be stuck in the situation they have now with 5 airports, all running out of capacity.

Comparing the Island airport to Pearson is comparing watermelons to cherries - and that's actually and understatement.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Comparing the Island airport to Pearson is comparing watermelons to cherries - and that's actually and understatement.

I'm not comparing Pearson to TCCA. I'm just pointing out that letting Toronto have as many airports as several other world cities is worth nothing more than a bragging right at this point since we have two airports that serve their respective purposes very nicely.

 

[allabootmatt]

...not to mention that with proper regional rail integration (ie like Schiphol and not like, say, Heathrow) there's no reason to ever build another large, suburban airport to complement Pearson on the east side of the GTA, for example.

Count me as a Porter agnostic. I think the way they and the TPA have treated the City (with the collusion of the feds) totally stinks, but I love the service. When I lived at King and Bathurst I never once heard a plane. As long as the operation is kept within roughly reasonable parameters (no bridge, no jets, no runway extension) I say let it go.

To that end, I wish the mayor and Adam Vaughan would quietly admit defeat and drop the issue; it's a needless distraction and somewhat sours relations with Ottawa.

 

[sjc]

>>>I think the way they and the TPA have treated the City (with the collusion of the feds) totally stinks<<<

What have Porter and/or the TPA done inappropriately with respect to dealings with the city (Other than failing to agree to go away)?

 

[allabootmatt]

I am not an authority on the ins and outs of this whole thing (Adam Vaughan is!) but I was referring to the TPA's maneuvering on dodging taxes/PILOTs, the weird lawsuits that accompanied Porter's launch, etc.

 

[sjc]

TPA's "maneuvering" on taxes (which they don't pay, being a federal agency) started well before Porter arrived and much of the "maneuvering" has been from the city.

There have been lots of lawsuits, but most of them (especially the ones involving Air Canada) have been frivolous ones that Porter/TPA has won.

This report http://www.tc.gc.ca/pol/en/report/torontoPortAuthority/tpa.pdf does a pretty good job of documenting the legeal events prior to the launch of Porter.

 

[drum118]

May 03
I notice Porter sale place in the Skywalk is gone.
New airport structure