Pickering Airport (Transport Canada/GTAA, Proposed)

[crs1026]

(Trying to move this discussion back into this thread, it converged with the VIA Rail thread momentarily)

Here's my simplistic question - The premise for the Pickering Airport is, our need for funding is $XB and here's what that will get you.

Presumably, the response from GTAA would be, here's how we would spend the same $XB, and here's what we will get you.

Whose pitch would an investor choose?

- Paul

 

[MarkBrooks]

What future HSR?

HSR was cancelled when Doug got into power,if indeed it had ever been anything more than a study paper by the former government. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, or that it would never be profitable, it just means that it’s highly unlikely at this point.

See:

Ford rails against high-speed rail plan

WOODSTOCK – Ontario Premier Doug Ford is leaving little doubt his government will scrap plans for a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail corridor between Toronto and…

lfpress.com

 

[MarkBrooks]

(Trying to move this discussion back into this thread, it converged with the VIA Rail thread momentarily)

Here's my simplistic question - The premise for the Pickering Airport is, our need for funding is $XB and here's what that will get you.

Presumably, the response from GTAA would be, here's how we would spend the same $XB, and here's what we will get you.

Whose pitch would an investor choose?

- Paul

Yes, a good idea.
Some good questions, at this point the GTAA is out of the picture ( for political reasons but this could change), although it could always participate in the expected RFP which will be run by transport Canada.

What is most likely is a new airport authority, let’s call it the Pickering Airport Authority.

This would be structured similarly to the GTAA ( which only runs Pearson), in that it would be a not for profit, lease the land, pay rent to the federal government, and raise private capital with bond offerings to fund the build out.

Cost will vary but should be around $2.9 billion for the first phase ( two runways) and a terminal for 12 million pax a year. No rail has been mentioned to this point which is a problem.
We won’t really know until the RFP is announced and the requirements are specified.

 

[kEiThZ]

For context on Mark's delusions, Hamilton's terminal is sized for 3 million. And. Billy Bishop does 3 million annually. Mark envisions a capacity at launch they would make Pickering the fifth busiest airport in the country. All, without one of the two major national carriers hubbing there or even flying from there. Contextually, this would be unprecedented. The top 10 airports in the country are all either hubs or focus city for the major carriers.

Also hilarious that he just assumes that the GTAA, with a proven track record of managing Pearson will somehow be ruled out of involvement especially when there's an obvious interest in both airports being coordinated to share the airspace effectively and ensure that aviation capacity is provisioned in a manner profitable for the feds.

 

[crs1026]

For context on Mark's delusions, Hamilton's terminal is sized for 3 million. And. Billy Bishop does 3 million annually. Mark envisions a capacity at launch they would make Pickering the fifth busiest airport in the country. All, without one of the two major national carriers hubbing there or even flying from there. Contextually, this would be unprecedented. The top 10 airports in the country are all either hubs or focus city for the major carriers.

It reminds me a little of Los Angeles, where one has LAX but also Bob Hope (Burbank), and John Wayne (Orange) and a bit further San Diego. It's possible to access LA through any of these, because there are hubs further east that distribute the incoming business among these. There's a lot of attractiveness to staying away from LAX, but don't expect to fly Qantas or Emirates out of Bob Hope. And expect to have to change planes in Vegas, Denver, Fort Worth, or SFO.

I can't see where there are hubs in the Canadian market that would make this model work for Pickering. Montreal, maybe. Perhaps it might woo a few connecting flights out of Atlanta, Minneapolis, and/or Detroit. That would benefit the residents of the eastern GTA, but it would not generate much incoming business travel. Pearson is just too dominant, and accessing YYZ is still much easier than accessing LAX.. How many passengers to./from the western provinces would elect to change planes at Winnipeg to land at Pickering instead of Pearson?

Also hilarious that he just assumes that the GTAA, with a proven track record of managing Pearson will somehow be ruled out of involvement especially when there's an obvious interest in both airports being coordinated to share the airspace effectively and ensure that aviation capacity is provisioned in a manner profitable for the feds.

There's an illusion that now that we have the CIB, everybody with a positive proposal can just line up and there will be money available for all. I'm not buying that. VIA, GTAA, Pickering, and other things are probably competing for the same pool of cash. The CIB will behave like a bank - ie it will direct its available capital to projects based on ROI, passing the greater return to the investor and also making money for its shareholder(s). So if GTAA can offer a more attractive proposal, we don't get all three. I worry about this with VIA HFR, and the Pickering proponents ought to worry about GTAA. And others, no doubt.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

I can't see where there are hubs in the Canadian market that would make this model work for Pickering. Montreal, maybe. Perhaps it might woo a few connecting flights out of Atlanta, Minneapolis, and/or Detroit. That would benefit the residents of the eastern GTA, but it would not generate much incoming business travel. Pearson is just too dominant, and accessing YYZ is still much easier than accessing LAX.. How many passengers to./from the western provinces would elect to change planes at Winnipeg to land at Pickering instead of Pearson?

The US has lots of LCC,ULCC and even full service discount carriers that will take up at secondary airports. For example, JetBlue has made a hub at Long Beach. Southwest has hubs at Chicago Midway and Dallas Love. We don't have these carriers. And the nascent ones like Flair or Jetlines or even smaller carriers like Porter would never be able to carry a large airport. Not to mention that Air Canada and WestJet would simply engage in a fare war with any new entrant and bankrupt them. So again, who is going to anchor that airport? It's not going to be AC or WestJet and nobody else is big enough to do it.

The other issue is Traffic patterns. The top 10 airports in Canada easily account for >90% of all passenger traffic in the country. Top 15 probably >95%. All of those get multiple dailies from Pearson. So what destinations domestically are underserved?

Internationally and on transborder, Pearson is actually overserved. Which is why AC needs transborder and Latin America traffic to fill so many of its widebodies to Europe. AC, alone serves over 30 destinations in the US from Pearson. There's major American carriers who don't serve that many US destinations from their major hubs. So, again what destinations are there which Torontonians want to travel to that are going unserviced or even underserviced?

There's an illusion that now that we have the CIB, everybody with a positive proposal can just line up and there will be money available for all. I'm not buying that. VIA, GTAA, Pickering, and other things are probably competing for the same pool of cash. The CIB will behave like a bank - ie it will direct its available capital to projects based on ROI, passing the greater return to the investor and also making money for its shareholder(s). So if GTAA can offer a more attractive proposal, we don't get all three. I worry about this with VIA HFR, and the Pickering proponents ought to worry about GTAA. And others, no doubt.

I don't know if it's the CIB they are banking on. They say they have investors.

The bigger flaw in their plan is the assumption that the feds are neutral between the two airports. They are not. They would want maximum rents out of both airports. They don't want a price war hurting revenues from either.

 

[narduch]

If Pickering ever did get built I would expect it to have similar service as Hamilton or KW.

Weekend flights to Cancun or Punta Cana from your Sunwings and Transat type airlines. And maybe a few daily flights to Canada's big cities (similar to how AC does a few daily flights to Montreal from Hamilton)

But is that worth spending billions in public funds for?

 

[MarkBrooks]

If Pickering ever did get built I would expect it to have similar service as Hamilton or KW.

Weekend flights to Cancun or Punta Cana from your Sunwings and Transat type airlines. And maybe a few daily flights to Canada's big cities (similar to how AC does a few daily flights to Montreal from Hamilton)

But is that worth spending billions in public funds for?

With Pearson at Capacity, two airports need to be ready to pickup the load, Hamilton to the west, and Pickering to the east. It is expected that Pickering will take the lions share due to its more accessible location and the growth shifting to the eastern Toronto region.
This is simple demographics.

Here is a drive time graphic showing 30,45,60 min drive to Pickering airport and the Toronto region population growth projections. The earliest Pickering could open is 2028.

 

[jaybe]

With Pearson at Capacity, two airports need to be ready to pickup the load, Hamilton to the west, and Pickering to the east. It is expected that Pickering will take the lions share due to its more accessible location and the growth shifting to the eastern Toronto region.
This is simple demographics.

Here is a drive time graphic showing 30,45,60 min drive to Pickering airport and the Toronto region population growth projections. The earliest Pickering could open is 2028.View attachment 198064View attachment 198065

A massive correction is required on your "simple demographics" comment.

Look at the population growth stats for Ontario as posted by the Ontario Government: https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/projections/table4.html. These stats come directly from StatsCan, the same source as noted in your post.

In addition to the GTA stats (which are incorrectly denoted in the table you posted - the Reference projections are not listed), look at the tables for Hamilton, Brant, Dufferin, Wellington, Waterloo and Niagara (west) and compare the projected population in 2041 with communities to the east, Northumberland, Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes. The project growth in Ontario is clearly to the west of Toronto. The projected population for these communities in 2041 is 2.6M residents west of Toronto vs 263,000 to the east.

I truly don't understand the spin here. Whats' with the dogged support of investing potentially tens of billions in an airport that is clearly not required in this location?

 

[narduch]

He's being paid to post on forums and support it.

It makes me feel a bit like a sucker. For all the time I spend on line would be nice to get paid for it. LOL

 

[nfitz]

If Pickering ever did get built I would expect it to have similar service as Hamilton or KW.

Those are passenger airports though - as I've pointed out more than once, the most recent plan was that Pickering open with just general aviation.

Mark hasn't even tried to refute that! He's trolling us by ignoring comments that he can't refute, and then throwing strawmen arguments where it seems more plausible, deep in the details.

 

[kEiThZ]

The thing is, building an airport that handles a few million per year isn’t really all that difficult. Porter essentially operates from a glorified GA airport. And they are pushing 3 million pax per year, using aircraft that max out at 78 seats. Depending on runways provided, aircraft can be sized up substantially. Provide a 5000 ft runway and an operator can use the A200-100 with 100-135 seats. Provide an 8000 ft runway and you can operate all the Boeing and Airbus narrowbodies right up to the A321NEO and 737 Max 10 carrying over 200 pax. Could probably do some widebody operations, though an 8000 ft runway would probably discourage many widebody operators.

So an 8000 ft runway and a small terminal with a few gates (4-8 gates), generating 60-70 narrowbody flights a day (~5 departures per hour) would easily get you to 3 million departing pax per year. You could probably size the terminal and ramp to do more than 5 million per year and tack that on to a 4000 ft runway for GA and a private executive terminal, allowing for the consolidation of Buttonville, Oshawa and Billy Bishop. All for substantially less than a billion.

The costs start to rise substantially when wide bodies and more international operations enter the picture. The runways need to be longer, wider and stronger. The terminal needs to be larger since pre-boarding times are higher with wide bodies. The ramp needs to be larger since widebodies take up more space and are on the ground longer. This should provide an idea of where the idea of a Pickering airport goes from marginally sensible to ridiculous fantasy.

All that said, whatever facility is built over and above what is meant to consolidate regional GA, will have the same persistent question, who is going fly from there? It’s not as convenient as YYZ and YTZ. It’s not going to have as many airlines competing, and will have high debt at launch, making the discounting of fees difficult. Not to mention the requirement to provide ROI/ROC to investors.

The other question of course is what this same amount would do elsewhere. $1 billion at Pearson gets them the other runway they need. $1 billion on Hamilton (which already has a 10 000 ft and 6000 ft runway) would get them a new terminal, parking structures and airside development to take them to probably 10 million pax annually. Building that at Pickering would cost $2-3 billion. So the question becomes, is the proximity to Toronto worth spending the extra $1-2 billion required to build Pickering.

 

[MarkBrooks]

He's being paid to post on forums and support it.

It makes me feel a bit like a sucker. For all the time I spend on line would be nice to get paid for it. LOL

I am most certainly not being paid by anyone, the suggest that myself or other pro airport supporters are some how benefited financially in any way is false.

Where exactly did you get that idea ?

 

[crs1026]

^That driving graphic hugely misses the point. I can’t see anyone west of Vic Park taking a risk on the DVP/404/Markham Road congestion. Sure, Pearson is no picnic, but it’s a more known if consistent plod to Pearson, and public transit does connect.

Certainly the 407 access is good, and a Rocket route to Markham GO would make a decent RER connection. But that map overstates the realistic catchment area.

I can’t see any of those alternate GO routings ever playing out.... even the vacant land outside the airport fence is already held by developers. Not gonna give that up, or have a non-stopping rail line added to those new neighbourhoods.

- Paul

 

[Isotack]

I am most certainly not being paid by anyone, the suggest that myself or other pro airport supporters are some how benefited financially in any way is false.

Where exactly did you get that idea ?

He was losing the argument, so like they always do, they go low. Like calling a conservative racist when their argument runs dry.