From what I know, it is more than an order of magnitude likelier that Canada will announce HFR or HSR funding than a new major international airport and make sure that is fully constructed (not cancelled) before the airport begins construction.
Throw in HFR construction delays, and there's your earliest-possible bounds. Because of that, I think the window is closer to 50 years (e.g. announcement in 30-35 years from now) if it is the Mirabel technique (
"taxpayer funded bootstrap directly to an International Airport") route.
Soooo.....if it's the "
straight to International Status" route:
Here my opinion of the accelerated route:
-- I do not think a paper announcement by the Feds will come before 2020s
-- I do not think full EAs will finish before the late 2020s, more likely the 2030s
-- I do not think genuine shovels will begin before the late 2030s or early 2040s
-- I do not think procurement will occur right after EA, there will be political flipflopping, NIMBYs, cons-vs-libs, climate agreements putting fistcuffs on govt administrations, and other factors etc.
-- Add construction procurement delays + politics delays + construction delays
-- Stretched out, naturally, this squarely puts it in my window of rough "25-50-100" window -- aka ~2045 absolute earliest possible instead of ~2032.
Now more realistic rather than accelerated, is more like a 50 year timeline rather than barely 25 year.
Ignoring the privatized 407 (the one that many says is a boondoggle) -- the government-owned 407 East extension is taking nearly 15 years from EA start to finish. The route analysis was done in early 2000s and EA was completed in 2007
There's just too many weak links to politically torpedo easily. Inflate the EA beach ball, and you will get mega brick walls pop up to bounce that beach ball back for another decade or two -- e.g. as simple as an election change of administration, as it is unlikely all major parties will simultaneously agree on full-throttle Pickering. There are currently so many easy cheap domino to delay a fully international Pickering a large number of years -- whether it's a preferred candy -- or whether it is a political opponent.
One could could could easily bet their mortgage on the 25 year window for the first flying commercial passenger (who paid on Expedia, Travelocity, etc, rather than paid for an airtaxi) and win their retirement savings. Hell, the odds for a 50 year window looks really damn good too. However, the 25 year window is an easy shoo-in.
Instead of going a route (near-Mirabel sized plan) that voters/governments currently balk at for a long time to come -- why not start it out as a sensibly sized GA airport with a flagship business or two (e.g. electric aircraft research or whatever).
Heck,
electric GO trains were EA'd in the 1970s and the GO RER isn't built yet -- we're getting closer (ETA: 2028 for first electric GO trains, thanks Ford).
And we were going to get an LRT in Hamilton in the 1970s --
it was fully funded. We finally are getting our LRT albiet over a different route, it is much further along: demolitions and early works have started already, but we're also cognizant of what happened to the
Eglinton Subway which was even further along and
actually began construction in the 1990s (the initial tunnel got filled in during the 1990s when cancelled).
Now it's only now that all parties (blue, red, orange, green) are all pro-GO-expansion. So GO is expanding no matter what party. But we haven't reached that exploding-kettle status where all parties are pro-Pickering. EA windows are bigger than 4 year political terms and and often the planning takes more than 2 terms too.
And the new subway under Queen Street was
first proposed in 1911 as an underground streetcar. It is now Relief Line / Ontario Line = naming and architecture is still being tweaked as a political football even as it gets ever closer to reality.
There are no current mega-events (Olympics, Expo) within the timelines of Pickering Airport that is also near enough to Pickering Airport to be worth our while, and the appetite of the world in funding mega-events is at a near all-time low after the ghost stadiums (Greece, Sochi, Rio, etc). Mirabel was rammed through partially thanks to the '76 Olympics. So the build-pressure is weaker and the antibuild-pressure is stronger (and very easy for a little-person candidate to fund a campaign on) to at least even torpedo a few-year delay into the mix. Rinse and repeat at every stage, and it is all but assured of the 25+ year guaranteed earliest.
(...I can go on forever...)
Yes, the land is protected for it and may someday become Pickering International Airport -- but it's really truly a 25-50-100 window.
Oh, and the magical thing about population growth is it makes roads congested, creating funding pressures for transit well before funding pressures for airports. We have no more room to widen 400 series anymore.
And guess what: A single GO train carries 2000 people: That's one hour worth of cars on one lane (1 car every 2 seconds is 1800 cars per hour. There are 3600 seconds in one hour). Do the math. One GO train = One hour of freeway lane. Or a quick series of subway trains over a 5-10 minute period. So you get more population, you need to upgrade corridors to mass transit, it's just a numbers game.
And a growing population = pressure for transit funding that will eat up capital long before funding a Mirabell sized airport. Say hello to challenger politicans that will easily torpedo any pro-airport candidate campaign money. I've napkinmathed population growth patterns (suburban-league, urban-league, even Pickering sprawl-league), and all the numbers favour transit dominos falling before Mirabel-airport-sized dominos.
Even at the current growth of the region becoming slightly accelerated from a booming Toronto downtown, the 25 year is a generously optimistic accelerated timeline for a large commercial passenger airport, pretty much guaranteed, to the mortgage-betting proportions (aka almost no odds of it happens 24 years or sooner). I would be saying all the above regardless of whether I am pro-Pickering or anti-Pickering. This is just how things work.
And one thing that happens with denser regions is that regional transit tends to get upgraded -- which helps with load-spreading between airports. And retards medium-distance flight growth (e.g. loss of near-distance domestic passenger growth offset by more profitable long-haul growth.) For example, VIA HFR can fling passengers between Toronto and Ottawa in just a mere 3 hours (Toronto-Ottawa and Montrea-Quebec will be more than an hour faster, even tough Toronto-Montreal isn't much faster). This can eliminate quite a few flights between Toronto-Ottawa, relieving domestic air passenger growth to be recycled for more profitable long haul passenger growth. Aviation will keep growing, but the way dominoes fall is that growth will not be as rapid as projected because of all the chessboard being scrambled around by the changes to transit/transportation. Not everyone will shift to the train, but there will be fewer reasons to fly 1-hour flights in a transit-upgraded region accelerated by Paris II pressures and other politics.
A perfect execution = 25 years earliest, almost guaranteed. By advocates and governments (and successful defense against challengers) will potentially successfully barely pull off commercial flights within the 25 year window -- while an imperfect execution will very realistically push it even further out. Whether it's a Paris II or III agreement causing HSR announcements, or a government switchover that holds the brakes, or some administration lazily sits on an EA being wimpy about funding announcement, or a different administration getting cold feet from anti-Mirabel pressure, or a major Canadian recession / property market crash, or some unexpected population growth slowdown, etc.
So 50 years could be an easy bet, not just 25. Even a size somewhere in between GA and Mirabel (a London, Ontario sized mostly domestic airport that's barely international) will simply serve to accelerate a probable 50 years into 25 years.
Thus, for any Pickering Airport advocate wanting to accelerate Pickering, it is easiest to scale back Pickering Airport into a GA --
closer to approximately what I described above.