Pickering Airport (Transport Canada/GTAA, Proposed)

[nfitz]

I stand corrected then. Although Mirabel was supposed to take all the international traffic from Trudeau rather than international remain at Trudeau, and Domestic/USA flights moved to Mirabel.

Until it actually opened, Mirabel was supposed to take ALL traffic from Montreal-Trudeau. The idea was that Dorval would redeveloped to other land uses.

BTW, there's an article in yesterday's Gazette about the terminal being demolished - http://www.montrealgazette.com/busi...+Mirabel+airport+terminal/10208929/story.html

While only 38 years after it opened, it actually stood longer than Toronto Terminal 2, which was demolished starting in 2007 when it was only 35 years old.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Much of what you say is very true, yet I feel the need to prolong the debate just a little bit. I'm aware that the thread is on transportation links to the airport rather than the airport itself; I won't make any more ideological comments after this one

Are my attitudes NIMBY? Of course they are. Is NIMBY always such a detestable thing? Not necessarily: only if those attitudes stand in opposition to progress and block the construction of infrastructure that is necessary. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, those men and women who opposed the Spadina Expressway would have been lambasted as NIMBYs, and yet we all know now how vital their work was in keeping Toronto's downtown the vibrant area that it remains today and congratulate them for their struggle. So I don't mind being a NIMBY if it means doing what I think is right. The key is that the Pickering Airport is not a necessary evil, and opposition to it should not be thrown out as simple NIMBYism. It's about trying to minimize the damage to our environment and natural heritage, preserving our communities' health, and in fact also spending our tax dollars wisely.

Pearson has much spare capacity. Hamilton has capacity and room to expand. Waterloo has room to expand (and that's all the better if HSR is ever realized). Yes, it would be nice to have an airport in the eastern end of the GTHA, but there's no use in destroying so very much farmland and spending so very many taxpayer dollars to build an entirely new airport in Pickering for which there is no, and has never been a, business case.

To link the east of the GTHA to its western-concentrated airports, our money and effort would be far better spent in upgrading regional and local transit to the airports that do exist. That means full GO service on all lines, to link the GTA with Pearson, Hamilton, and Waterloo, along with dedicated bus services to connect higher-order transit lines to the airports themselves. Travel time will not be instantaneous, and yes may be slower than a link to Pickering, but it will be possible.

Environmental damage will occur no matter which airport is expanded, but the Pickering Federal Lands remain untouched greenspace as of now. If the airport is cancelled and the land placed under protection, it can remain an agricultural preserve in perpetuity - all that's lacking is the political will to do so. Land around Hamilton and Waterloo airports will be lost as they are expanded, for sure, but those airports exist already, and that loss will be hugely less than building an entirely new one. With regards to fertility of the soil, the airport lands in Pickering are nearly 100% located on Class 1 soil.

And as to drawing jobs to the east of the city, it's folly to think that manufacturing and industry will suddenly experience a rennaissance in Durham if catalyzed by an airport. These sectors have been in decline not only in Durham but indeed across Ontario for years now, and the factors pushing that trend along will not easily be alleviated by an airport in Pickering. If there are to be expansions, there are serious vacancies in already industrial-zoned areas in Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, and Oshawa near established road and rail connections. No need to tear up greenspace for more.

I could drone on for days, but I'll stop now for having pulled this thread fairly off-topic. As you've said that my posts are in part just my views and not facts, so it is the same with yours. I'm not at all trying to pit the GTA against itself

What would you say to Toronto Waterfront residents who would like to see a Pickering airport built and the Island airport closed? That the Island airport is already there? See how the "In My Backyard Yard" is a key part of NIMBY'ism? And yes NIMBY'ism is bad when it's focus is overly centered on a local area, again the "In My Back Yard". Furthermore NIMBY'ism is worse when it's proponents suggest pushing a project to any area but their own back yard. Why? Because they accept the need for something but the attitude is let someone else deal with it.

As to your comment about Pearson having spare capacity. This has been discussed much before, and it's not as under capacity as people would like to or would like others to believe...
Toronto Pearson Saw Approx 435 000 aircraft movements in 2012 per NAV Canada, here and GTAA website here. Of which approx 400 000 were commercial passenger aircraft. In a 3 plus 2 crosswind runway configuration that puts Pearson roughly into the top 20 airports in the world by aircraft movements (Most airports in that list have 3+ runways, the only one I could find with less than 3 runways was London Heathrow) and the eventual expansion to a 4th runway and approx 600 000 aircraft movement per year, per GTAA here.

In that year it served approx 35 million passengers again per GTAA here and airports council international via Wikipedia here. Doing quick math I get that to be an average of 90 passengers per plane. That why we see a lot of small narrow body jets at pearson, 737's, 319's, 320's, and CRJ's.

Why did I go through all this trouble? While Pearson does has the ability to grow by about 50% from 400 000 to 600 000 aircraft in order to really move large numbers of passengers they are going to have to move to larger aircraft and busier routes to increase the average number of passengers per plane. To do that they could ask the airlines to switch some of those hourly flights to Montreal/New York to every two hours or even every 4 hours on larger aircraft; and or drop some of the smaller regional routes that Air Canada operates to small communities. You can be sure that the government would not be happy to see flights to North Bay being dropped in favour of flights to Sao Paolo for example. Yes there is room for growth but not as much when you consider the planning horizon is 25 to 30 years down the road.

 

[BMO]

What would you say to Toronto Waterfront residents who would like to see a Pickering airport built and the Island airport closed? That the Island airport is already there? See how the "In My Backyard Yard" is a key part of NIMBY'ism? And yes NIMBY'ism is bad when it's focus is overly centered on a local area, again the "In My Back Yard". Furthermore NIMBY'ism is worse when it's proponents suggest pushing a project to any area but their own back yard. Why? Because they accept the need for something but the attitude is let someone else deal with it.

As to your comment about Pearson having spare capacity. This has been discussed much before, and it's not as under capacity as people would like to or would like others to believe...
Toronto Pearson Saw Approx 435 000 aircraft movements in 2012 per NAV Canada, here and GTAA website here. Of which approx 400 000 were commercial passenger aircraft. In a 3 plus 2 crosswind runway configuration that puts Pearson roughly into the top 20 airports in the world by aircraft movements (Most airports in that list have 3+ runways, the only one I could find with less than 3 runways was London Heathrow) and the eventual expansion to a 4th runway and approx 600 000 aircraft movement per year, per GTAA here.

In that year it served approx 35 million passengers again per GTAA here and airports council international via Wikipedia here. Doing quick math I get that to be an average of 90 passengers per plane. That why we see a lot of small narrow body jets at pearson, 737's, 319's, 320's, and CRJ's.

Why did I go through all this trouble? While Pearson does has the ability to grow by about 50% from 400 000 to 600 000 aircraft in order to really move large numbers of passengers they are going to have to move to larger aircraft and busier routes to increase the average number of passengers per plane. To do that they could ask the airlines to switch some of those hourly flights to Montreal/New York to every two hours or even every 4 hours on larger aircraft; and or drop some of the smaller regional routes that Air Canada operates to small communities. You can be sure that the government would not be happy to see flights to North Bay being dropped in favour of flights to Sao Paolo for example. Yes there is room for growth but not as much when you consider the planning horizon is 25 to 30 years down the road.

This is an interesting point, and one that I hadn't actually thought about much when this topic has been brought up occasionally at the water cooler, etc. I guess smaller planes still take up a landing and take-off movement regardless of how many passengers they carry, just like a subway train the overall passenger capacity at the airport depends on the size and capacity of the aircraft. I remember hearing Buttonville (which is slated to close) is in the top ten busiest airports in Canada based on aircraft movements. I guess once it shuts down those aircraft will need to go somewhere.

 

[Tim MacDonald]

Until it actually opened, Mirabel was supposed to take ALL traffic from Montreal-Trudeau. The idea was that Dorval would redeveloped to other land uses.

BTW, there's an article in yesterday's Gazette about the terminal being demolished - http://www.montrealgazette.com/busi...+Mirabel+airport+terminal/10208929/story.html

While only 28 years after it opened, it actually stood longer than Toronto Terminal 2, which was demolished starting in 2007 when it was only 25 years old.

T2 was older than 25 years. First phase opened in 1972 if I remember correctly with the last addition (3 gate Mod Q) opening in 1989. Terrible building and was happy to see it go.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

MrsNesbitt, it is certainly not just you derailing the thread. It seems that it's impossible for people to talk about Pickering Airport transportation without talking about the airport itself. There's no reason to have separate threads for the time being, so I have merged the threads. At such time in the distant future when we have to actually worry about transport to this airport, a new train line being built to it could be discussed in a separate thread then. For now all the speculation about whatever related to the airport might as well be here.

Understandable. I guess at this point I'd like to invite anyone else from the old thread to contribute to said transit connection speculation? Discussion starts at post #218 (page 15).

 

[nfitz]

T2 was older than 25 years. First phase opened in 1972 if I remember correctly with the last addition (3 gate Mod Q) opening in 1989. Terrible building and was happy to see it go.

Brain fart ... I took 2014 and subtracted 1976 and got 28 instead of 38. Then I took 2007, subtracted 1972, and got 25 instead of 35. I fixed my post.

The point still stands - the terminal at Mirabel actually stood longer than Terminal 2 at Pearson!

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

Why did I go through all this trouble? While Pearson does has the ability to grow by about 50% from 400 000 to 600 000 aircraft in order to really move large numbers of passengers they are going to have to move to larger aircraft and busier routes to increase the average number of passengers per plane. To do that they could ask the airlines to switch some of those hourly flights to Montreal/New York to every two hours or even every 4 hours on larger aircraft; and or drop some of the smaller regional routes that Air Canada operates to small communities. You can be sure that the government would not be happy to see flights to North Bay being dropped in favour of flights to Sao Paolo for example. Yes there is room for growth but not as much when you consider the planning horizon is 25 to 30 years down the road.

Airlines run those narrow body flights partly because landing slots are not at all constrained at Pearson and they are all competing for a slice of demand. As a result there is a lot of duplication across airlines and destinations that would not exist if landing slots were more constrained. For example, here are today's departures to NYC airports before 10AM: 6:14, 6:20, 6:29, 6:30 (2), 7:00, 7:25, 8:05, 8:15, 8:20, 9:15, 9:25, 9:30, 9:40. Obviously this is an extreme example, but you should get the gist of it - there are a lot of small planes flying to the same destinations that could easily be consolidated (through higher landing fees) if necessary.

Also, from the airlines perspective it is much better to have one large airport than multiple ones. Far easier to manage connections if all of your flights end up at the same place. This is one of the reasons that Hamilton is had little success in attracting commercial aviation - it can only serve origin and destination traffic.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Airlines run those narrow body flights partly because landing slots are not at all constrained at Pearson and they are all competing for a slice of demand. As a result there is a lot of duplication across airlines and destinations that would not exist if landing slots were more constrained. For example, here are today's departures to NYC airports before 10AM: 6:14, 6:20, 6:29, 6:30 (2), 7:00, 7:25, 8:05, 8:15, 8:20, 9:15, 9:25, 9:30, 9:40. Obviously this is an extreme example, but you should get the gist of it - there are a lot of small planes flying to the same destinations that could easily be consolidated (through higher landing fees) if necessary.

Also, from the airlines perspective it is much better to have one large airport than multiple ones. Far easier to manage connections if all of your flights end up at the same place. This is one of the reasons that Hamilton is had little success in attracting commercial aviation - it can only serve origin and destination traffic.

Fair enough. Part of that is passenger demand for choice in a variety of departure times. Part of that is competition, Air Canada, United, Delta, WestJet, etc all want a flight on the same route leaving around the same time to compete. Part of that is that, yes there are a number of slots available, however the airport can't artificially (outside of raising the already too high according to some landing fees) force the airlines to move to larger less frequent airplanes if the airline doesn't feel like the economics make sense.

 

[Centurion]

T2 was older than 25 years. First phase opened in 1972 if I remember correctly with the last addition (3 gate Mod Q) opening in 1989. Terrible building and was happy to see it go.

T2 had to be one of the ugliest terminals ever.

 

[nfitz]

T2 had to be one of the ugliest terminals ever.

T2? It was pretty plain and vanilla. But I don't recall anything particularly ugly about it. It certainly seemed modern enough when it opened, compared to T1 and Dorval - though both of those had an odd 1960s elegance - until the day T1 closed, I expected to find those old B&W TV booths/thingys (not sure what you called them - put coins in to watch).

I've seen far worse in the US - particularly smaller airport - but what about parts of Detroit or LAX? Or the old terminal at Vancouver before it was modernized after they opened the new international terminal.

 

[Tim MacDonald]

Until they did the modifications in the mid to late nineties, there were hardly any windows on the airside portion which made it pretty dark and cave like. Also, due to the sheer straight length of it, it was difficult to get from one end to the other quickly.

Thanks for the memories regarding the Terminal One Pay TV terminals. I had completely forgotten about those things even though they were around when I started working there in the late 1980s!

 

[socamonarch]

T2? It was pretty plain and vanilla. But I don't recall anything particularly ugly about it. It certainly seemed modern enough when it opened, compared to T1 and Dorval - though both of those had an odd 1960s elegance - until the day T1 closed, I expected to find those old B&W TV booths/thingys (not sure what you called them - put coins in to watch).

I've seen far worse in the US - particularly smaller airport - but what about parts of Detroit or LAX? Or the old terminal at Vancouver before it was modernized after they opened the new international terminal.

Remember T2 wasn't originally meant for a passenger terminal, it was designed as a cargo terminal and retrofitted as a passenger terminal once they realized that the original Pickering airport was cancelled.

 

[nfitz]

Remember T2 wasn't originally meant for a passenger terminal, it was designed as a cargo terminal and retrofitted as a passenger terminal once they realized that the original Pickering airport was cancelled.

Given that the original terminal 2 that they started construction in the 1960s looked like a typical passenger terminal, and opened in 1972, before I ever heard mention of Pickering, I really have a hard time believing this. Wasn't Pickering not cancelled (or at least suspended) until 1975?

Do you have any source for this? It sounds like an urban legend to me.

 

[kEiThZ]

It is (IMO) the exact opposite of Mirabel.....there, they opened a mega, modern airport and expected the world to fly into it....then tried many attempts at downsizing it to fit the market needs....charter-cargo-close it and teach high performance driving on the runways (if you can believe AmazingRaceCanada)........at Pickering there seems to be a move to open small and build to the market needs.

That said, since we are debating the possible transit needs of an airport that has not been built and not actually approved (even though it seems they have been talking about it my entire adult life) it makes me wonder if that is not what the transit fantasy map thread was intended for

Mirabel would have worked if they actually followed through with the plan and closed Dorval and reduced commercial traffic in Ottawa. The plan made sense. The political will to follow through, however, was lacking.

Even now, Dorval is a great chunk of Montreal real estate that could be put to great use.

 

[kEiThZ]

People don't drive to Buffalo because its convenient...nor do they even pretend its convenient....they do it because it is cheap....then they justify the inconvenience as not so much that it offsets the savings they have.

I get that. But get fees at Hamilton low enough and it'll start drawing away the crowds from Buffalo and Pearson.

A majority of the fees charged for transborder flights are from the US government and the incredibly high landing fees at Pearson. Get those fees down and Hamilton could be competitive with Buffalo since the majority of the fees charged are the same in Buffalo or Hamilton, thanks to the 225 mile rule:

http://www.state.gov/ofm/resource/imp/tax/20129.htm