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EnviroTO said:
That isn't what exists. What exists is two lanes of through traffic, two lanes for the streetcar on Bathurst and Queens Quay.
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Plus two other lanes, that are turning lanes. There's 6 lanes on Bathurst. My point is that Bathurst is a major artery. The width here looks wider than it is at Bloor - and I assume you agree that Bathurst is a major artery at Bloor.

EnviroTO said:
There isn't space on the island for all those taxis. Consideration wasn't made because it was a Nantucket like airport with private prop planes and some Dash 8s with 32 seats. They can put a bridge to the airport but really that was yesterday's solution to an access problem to a much smaller terminal. There are serious space constraints. Where are the cars going to sit on the island?
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There's plenty of place on the island. Build a structure on the existing parking lot. Move some hangers to where there is empty land. I bet if they were getting their bridge, they could think up a way to get the taxis on the island.

EnviroTO said:
Toronto Island is a major international airport?
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Number 14 airport in Canada by aircraft movements in 2011 just after Quebec City. In terms of number of passengers it's number 9 ahead of Quebec, Regina, and Saskatoon. Obviously it's no Pearson, but major in the same way that the Quebec, Regina, and Saskatoon airports are.
 
nfitz said:
I never said Eriann Quay is 6 lanes. I was talking about Bathurst. As was the previous poster, as they were talking about streetcar lanes, and there are no streetcar tracks on Eirann Quay.

A bridge is the solution as far as I can see. Cars could park at the airport on the island. There's already one car park on the island. If further space is unavailable, build a parking structure on or under the existing parking lot on the island. There isn't much parking on the north side of the western gap anyways.

Most importantly, a bridge would move all the cars milling around picking up people, dropping them off, and blocking pedestrian access to the water. And it would get all those taxis out of the way.
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Not up to your usual standards. A vehicular bridge would either block boat traffic from the western gap (impossible), or its approaches would take up far more room than the airport parking area currently does (impossible). Bathurst south of Lakeshore (specified by the OP) is 2 lanes plus ROW. North of Lakeshore too. You don't spend much time in the area, do you?

You say that if jets are quieter there is no good reason to oppose jets. But you're not that naive about politics. If the tripartitite agreement is malleable, then what is to stop Porter from asking for more landing slots in future? So, in the eyes of opponents, anything that makes Porter more profitable and better for passengers must be opposed. You can't blame them.

Me, I'm of two minds. Porter is nice, but I can't trust the process or the people involved. So I think jets are 'a bridge too far'.
 
k10ery said:
You say that if jets are quieter there is no good reason to oppose jets. But you're not that naive about politics. If the tripartitite agreement is malleable, then what is to stop Porter from asking for more landing slots in future? So, in the eyes of opponents, anything that makes Porter more profitable and better for passengers must be opposed. You can't blame them.
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What should there be? If Porter asked for more slots why not just deal with that question then?

This slippery slope argument is weird in that the slope leads to a very innocuous place. Normally slippery slopes are supposed to be scary! 'Allow gay marriage and soon we'll all be shacking up with horses or our sisters!'

Why would I care if in 10 years or whatever after Porter gets jets they come back and ask for more landing slots?

I don't see why they should be prohibited from asking.

I don't understand why people expect a single contract will sort out how YTZ ought to operate until the end of time. It's an airport. Its operations will very amongst a number of technical, economic and environmental constraints.
 
nfitz said:
bunch of whining Nimby's who want do kill poor helpless children in Weston by forcing them to breath fumes from horrible, horrible, polluting diesel trains.
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Nfitz, please be assured that I have nothing to do with diesel trains and fumes killing children, in fact I don't even have a car.

If you are referring to Union Station - Pearson express, I totally support complete electrification of that line ASAP. If asked, I will be willing to pay an additional $10-$15 fee on top of the regular fee provided that that fund will be 100% used for improvements to reduce the environmental impact of UPE.

Also, if there is anything I can do now (sign a petition, join a community group, etc), let me know and I will do it.

On the other hand, if your concerns about children are genuine, why don't you raise any concern about children studying at the City School or neighbor kids playing at the Little Norway Park which both are only 100m away from the airport? Do you think emissions of 200+ jet planes per day is acceptable for "condo" kids?

nfitz said:
Moving next to a major international airport, and then campaigning against it? Really? You only have to read "cinammon"s stuff briefly to see that they don't simply want to stop these jets ... they actually want to completely eliminate the airport. I really can't comprehend such a massively self-centred suggestion, and can't comprehend why anyone would suggest anything so utterly ridiculous!
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1. We did not moved next to a major international airport, we moved to a residential area next to a city airport, after having been guaranteed by three levels of government that there would be specific limitations on airport operations;

2. Our campaign is not to shut down the airport (which is almost impossible), it is to force City to ensure limitations dictated by tripartite agreement are correctly executed;

3. In medium to long term, I think City Airport will be totally redundant and will be a liability other than an asset; this is what I said in some of my previous post in a nut shell. This is not a campaign to shut the airport down, it is an argument against TPA's claim that city airport is an irreplaceable asset to Toronto's economy;

4. I have concerns and questions regarding professional ethics of Porter Airlines and Toronto Port Authority.

You are good at manipulating while totally ignoring what the real problem is (listed above) and avoiding any proper discussion with slogans and name calling, hence I asked you if you have a relationship with Rob Ford, not because of your political views.
 
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picard102 said:
A contract that was never written in stone on Mount Sinai, never written with a view to the future. Just another myopic piece of paper signed by people who had no idea what the future would hold. Only of benefit to people who want to see the airport gone entirely, brandishing it about as the sole reason to deny the request, ignoring the real issues the agreement meant to solve.
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Tripartite agreement protects the environment, rights of the residents as well as operational rights of the city airport and establishes a balance between them. This can be reviewed and amended on the same grounds with a mutual agreement. Current request of Porter's does not consider any balance among the stakeholders, but only focuses its own business ambitions.

picard102 said:
It sounds unreasonable. Which seems to be a theme you got going.
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You are conflicting with yourself. Like you said, tripartite agreement was written in 1983 with information available then. If we have more academic studies in hand regarding adverse health effects of airport noise, why not amend the agreement and make it more stringent? Why it is fine to amend the contract if we have developed a better jet plane but not fine if we have discovered that it actually damages the public health?

Taken from updated (2009) regulations of London City Airport:

The existing approved operating hours have been maintained under the 2009 planning approval. The Airport is permitted to operate flights between the following hours:

i) 06.30 and 22.30 on weekdays
ii) 06.30 and 13.00 on Saturdays
iii) 12.30 and 22.30 on Sundays
iv) 09.00 and 22.30 on Public or Bank Holidays
v) Full closure on 25th December

There is a 24 hour period of closure from Saturday lunchtime to Sunday lunchtime. The final 30 minutes of operation on every day of the week is solely for flights scheduled earlier which have been unavoidably delayed.

In July 2009 the LBN granted planning permission to increase the total number of permitted aircraft movements to 120,000 per year, including both scheduled and private operations. Strict limits are also applied to the number of daily aircraft movements.

i) 100 per day on Saturdays, 200 per day on Sundays, but no more than 280 on any consecutive Saturday and Sunday
ii) 592 per weekday, except for Public or Bank Holidays, specifically:
iii) 132 on 1st January
iv) 164 on Good Friday
v) 198 on Easter Monday
vi) 248 on May Day
vii) 230 on late May Bank Holiday
viii) 230 on late August Bank Holiday
ix) 100 on 26th December

There are also limits for aircraft movements which occur during specific operational periods:

x) 400 aircraft movements per calendar year or 150 in any consecutive 3 months between 22.00 and 22.30 hours, or 12.30 and 13.00 hours on a Saturday
xi) 6 aircraft movements between 06.30 and 06.59 hours with no more than 2 in the first fifteen minutes.

The 120,000 aircraft movements per year limit also applies to Noise Factored movements. All aircraft movements have a numerical factor applied (see Table 2.1), which relates to the level of departure noise each aircraft produces, e.g. the loudest aircraft type has a noise factor of 1.26, the quietest, 0.08. Noise Factored movements should also not exceed the permitted number of aircraft movements for that week by more than 25%.

Link to full report: http://www.londoncityairport.com/content/pdf/LCY Noise Action Plan 2012.pdf

TPA slowly increased the daily allowed slots from 97 to 202 (73,000 per year) through some arithmetical calculations with absolutely no restriction so now we have five Q400s lined up on the runway waiting for curfew and running their engines full speed at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning, or have 50 landings and take-offs within couple of hours on a Friday night. Do you think people who signed tripartite agreement did foresee this?
 
Cinnamon said:
Tripartite agreement protects the environment, rights of the residents as well as operational rights of the city airport and establishes a balance between them. This can be reviewed and amended on the same grounds with a mutual agreement. Current request of Porter's does not consider any balance among the stakeholders, but only focuses its own business ambitions.
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Don't quieter less polluting aircraft benefit the residents in the area?
 
^Only if:
1. they are actually quieter and less polluting;
2. they actually replace (instead of supplement) noisier and more-polluting aircraft; and
3. the governance changes that allow their introduction do not result in other increases or serve as an incremental step to future increases.

If the foregoing are true, let's have TPA and Porter commit to that. I haven't seen them do so. Have I missed it?
 
voxpopulicosmicum said:
^Only if:
1. they are actually quieter and less polluting;
2. they actually replace (instead of supplement) noisier and more-polluting aircraft; and
3. the governance changes that allow their introduction do not result in other increases or serve as an incremental step to future increases.

If the foregoing are true, let's have TPA and Porter commit to that. I haven't seen them do so. Have I missed it?
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I think #1 is based on the windtunnel testing and proposed specs of the plane....people better versed than I on how those are done can comment but I agree, if the planes are not as quiet and environmentally friendly as advertised this is a bit of a non-starter.

#2 is interesting.....since Porter can only speak for its own slots it would be a straight trade off of Q400 take off and landings versus C100s....so the comparison would be just between those planes.

#3....Assuming that the new jets Porter was proposing to purchase and use met #1...I think that Porter (at least) would support committing to a restriction to that jet as it would mean anyone else (ie Air Canada) would have to purchase those jets also (ie. they could not just start flying existing jets from their fleet into the island....assuming they could land on the new proposed runway).
 
voxpopulicosmicum said:
^Only if:
3. the governance changes that allow their introduction do not result in other increases or serve as an incremental step to future increases.

If the foregoing are true, let's have TPA and Porter commit to that. I haven't seen them do so. Have I missed it?
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Well put. But commit to it .. like they committed to the tripartite agreement the first time? Or like they promised last year that lakefill was not the first step to a runway extension?

There are no real commitments in this business. As long as the airport is there, the threat of expansion is real.
 
k10ery said:
Me, I'm of two minds. Porter is nice, but I can't trust the process or the people involved. So I think jets are 'a bridge too far'.
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I'm in about the same place. I don't have a big issue with current state as the negative impact is still contained. I would probably vote to approve the current request, but I would like to see some commitment to an end state. The original agreement was based on a vision of what the airport should be and the residential buildings, school, and roads which have been built since have been built based on that vision. I would like to see a plan that can have real inputs, real public consultation, and where improvements are considered rather than a piecemeal process where law, agreements, and official plans turn into rough drafts. The GTAA's books and the books of publicly traded airlines are open and the plan for Pearson reaches 15+ years. In comparison the TPA is secretive and Porter is a private company with a near monopoly. I don't trust this setup. We need a plan for the airport and the western waterfront developed together.

If you run a design competition for a waterfront with a clean slate I don't think any submissions will put an airport in the middle of it. If you run a design competition for an airport with a clean slate I don't think any submissions will put an elementary school on the approach road. We don't have a clean slate but that isn't an excuse for not having an integrated plan when existing agreements are to be altered.
 
k10ery said:
Well put. But commit to it .. like they committed to the tripartite agreement the first time? Or like they promised last year that lakefill was not the first step to a runway extension?
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You mean the landfill used to extend the runway to the required safety limits?
 
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