Pickering Airport (Transport Canada/GTAA, Proposed)

[pw20]

Much of Scarborough would be closer to Pickering than Pearson, add ~500k. Same with the communities in York Region east of the 400, add ~600k. 2.2 million people, fairly close the your Hamilton number.

I purposefully left out core GTA municipalities because they already skew west (Miss and Brampton dwarf Durham - they now have 1.5M people and Etobicoke is the same size as Scarborough; I could see people in the west side of Miss or Brampton choosing to fly out of Hamilton, should that option exist, if flight prices were cheaper or because of airline loyalty, this happens frequently in New York - when I lived on the east side I almost never flew out of Newark because I was loyal to airlines that flew out of LGA and I didn't want to schlep cross town). However, I can add Halton (600k) to Hamilton's catchment area. Which leaves a 1M population delta (3.2 to 2.2M) There is simply a MUCH larger population pool west of the city and more importantly a giant economic and head office gap. Hamilton, St Cats, London, Guelph, Brantford and K-W combine for over 112B of GDP output. Oshawa and Peterborough account for 17B. Again, we can add in various facets of Scarborough and East York region, but we can cut the data ten ways and we'll find the same answer... https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610046801

 

[JasonParis]

Scarborough has about twice Etobicoke's population btw.

 

[pw20]

Scarborough has about twice Etobicoke's population btw.

Jeeze, you're totally right. For some reason I always thought they were equivalent! I stand corrected. The rest still stands!

 

[kEiThZ]

I brought this up earlier. The figures of catchment are misleading. A good chunk of Scarborough, East York and North York fall into the catchment of Pearson and/or Billy Bishop. Also funny how Pickering advocates use a 30 km radius to measure catchment. It's very convenient for their argument.

 

[narduch]

Much of Scarborough would be closer to Pickering than Pearson, add ~500k. Same with the communities in York Region east of the 400, add ~600k. 2.2 million people, fairly close the your Hamilton number.

I think East of Yonge makes more sense.

Even then if Pickering ever did open it won't be close to Pearson at first in terms of available routes

 

[MarkBrooks]

Here is a better look at the tryanny of geography. For passenger catchment areas the use the stats Canada database and derived info.. Here is what a 30km passenger area looks like.

 

[narduch]

People will only drive 30km to an airport? That's news to me.

Seems like a totally arbitrary number to pick.

 

[kEiThZ]

People will only drive 30km to an airport? That's news to me.

Seems like a totally arbitrary number to pick.

30 km is the radius which minimizes their overlap with YTZ and YYZ and makes YHM catchment look worse. Use a 50 km radius and Hamilton starts looking a lot better. 50 km radius would put all of the 416 and most of the 905 in the YYZ catchment. Would put Pickering in the YTZ catchment. And most of the Western GTA in the Hamilton catchment. Can't have that kind of realism here. Wouldn't help Pickering boosters.

The absurdity of their 30 km becomes obvious when you compare Oshawa to Hamilton and Waterloo. Three airports with similar catchment figures. Or London with those three, an airport with more service than the Oshawa, Hamilton and Waterloo combined. Or compare Mirabel and Ottawa. By Mark Brooks' reasoning, Mirabel should have as much service as YOW.

Like I said earlier, it's this kind of data manipulation that set off my BS detector. And instead of answering my questions, Mark decides to take the coward's way out and blocked me. Ask him to defend the 30 km radius. He can't.

 

[rbt]

People will only drive 30km to an airport? That's news to me.

Seems like a totally arbitrary number to pick.

Indeed. It seems excessively small when you look at locations linked by regularly scheduled YYZ shuttles (Barrie, Owen Sound, Kincardine, ...). 150km might be a more accurate catchment distance in North America.

People in Oak Lawn and other South/East Chicago neighbourhoods don't refuse to fly out of O'Hare 40km away, sticking strictly with Midway, because ORD is too far away.

Price and flight time (number of connections) being equal they would use the closer airport, but airport distance is one of the lesser concerns on that scale.

 

[MarkBrooks]

People will only drive 30km to an airport? That's news to me.

Seems like a totally arbitrary number to pick.

It appears that you may have confused the 30 km geography radius with drive distances and times.
Two separate issues.
Taking the new off ramp currently being built on the 407 as the airports point of access, and assuming the use of the 407 ( over other slower routes) you will find the drive times vary in uncontested traffic from 1 hour to the north west ( Newmarket) to 45 minutes to the east.
If you wish to determine drive distances from a specific location use google maps to this location.

 

[narduch]

The 407 isn't really a selling point.

It's so expensive most people avoid it now

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

An amalgamated Waterloo/London/Hamilton airport would serve 2,099,494 residents and 840,055 jobs. 2 cities would fight tooth and nail to keep their airport, however maybe that is the solution to having a second international airport in the GTA

 

[MarkBrooks]

The 407 isn't really a selling point.

It's so expensive most people avoid it now

Starting in 2021, it is going to have a lot of construction vehicle traffic, so it’s a blessing in disguise. It’s my understanding that A non toll north south road is also in plan... but I don’t details off hand.

 

[pw20]

FWIW Dulles is 37 nautical km from downtown DC, so I guess DC is out of the catchment area for Dulles?
Secondly, Mark does run the Friends of the Pickering Airport fan club! https://pickeringairport.org/about/

 

[MarkBrooks]

The 407 isn't really a selling point.

It's so expensive most people avoid it now

Starting in 2021, it is going to have a lot of construction vehicle traffic, so it’s a blessing in disguise for the airport during construction, and for the travel who would like to cut commutes

FWIW Dulles is 37 nautical km from downtown DC, so I guess it's out of the catchment area?

one of the reasons why DCs passengers traffic is evenly dispersed among three separate airports ( the other two are Regan and BWI ) is the geography of the area. Although it is unique for each city, and the term “ accessible aviation “ is used loosely to describe a 30 min or less drive, there is no hard rule. The 30 km came from commute time studies.

The key is determining what other infrastructure ( highways & roads) would need to be beefed up to enable longer commute distances.

Or we could go America style and let each city have its own airport and let free enterprise have at it! What a concept!