Pickering Airport (Transport Canada/GTAA, Proposed)

[dowlingm]

Not just Mirabel II - the Del Mastro ChooChoo too surely?

 

[DSC]

Since it's a Federal project under Federal authority on lands entirely owned by the Federal government, there's not a lot the province or the municipality can do directly to stop planning and construction. But since the province/municipality control the roads, transit, water/wastewater hookups, etc they can give a hard time. I might expect the City of Pickering and Town of Ajax to resist and even the province to put up some resistance, but not Durham Region which of course controls a lot of those services.

That was part of the problem with Mirabel. The Province failed to build any decent access roads so the already long trip there from downtown took a very long time.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

An international airport in Pickering would cost tens of billions of dollars, and would create massive noise pollution problems similar to those in the western GTA near Pearson.

Pearson is well below maximum capacity anyway. If it were to get near maximum capacity, why not build high speed rail instead? HSR would cost a lot of money, but a new airport would cost a lot of money as well.

Didn't GTAA say that Pearson would be at capacity in 20 years?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

So is this new airport a full fledged secondary international airport (akin to Newark or LaGuardia in NYC) or is it a small airport that happens to accept international flights?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I have to wonder if 407 ETR pushed the gov't to do this. As some have suggested, expanding the Hamilton airport and linking to Toronto with HSR would be a much better deal.

 

[rbt]

So is this new airport a full fledged secondary international airport (akin to Newark or LaGuardia in NYC) or is it a small airport that happens to accept international flights?

In the long-term I expect GTAA will encourage a division between airline alliances with Star Alliance taking over most of Pearson. West Jet, One World, Sky Team, and others would be moved to Pickering. Probably still a few decades out.

Depending on just how much the federal government wants this, we might see a contribution to The Big Move which builds infrastructure to Pickering Airport.

 

[allabootmatt]

It seems very very unlikely to me that with Pearson having five runways (by comparison, Heathrow has TWO and twice the passengers) that another full-service airport will be remotely necessary in our lifetimes. That said, I could see the case for a sleep general aviation and cargo field to replace Buttonville.

 

[rbt]

It seems very very unlikely to me that with Pearson having five runways (by comparison, Heathrow has TWO and twice the passengers) that another full-service airport will be remotely necessary in our lifetimes. That said, I could see the case for a sleep general aviation and cargo field to replace Buttonville.

Runway availability is weather dependent; Pearson also only has 2 runways much of the time. This is currently a frequent cause of delays during peak periods.

Incidentally, Pearson has just as many aircraft movements today as Heathrow and those little CRJ's take just as much runway time as a 777 despite carrying far fewer people.

The measurement to look at is peak period movements, where Pearson is actually quite a bit higher than Heathrow.

Heathrow is blessed with both unusually large aircraft due to the heavy international load (smaller regional flights use other London airports) and it has a spread out load through the day. Pearson experiences a rather dramatic morning and evening commuter period with a ton of tiny aircraft.

If anything, the Heathrow example shows the need for a Gatwick equivalent in the GTA so Pearson can focus on larger long-distance aircraft.


Denver is a much better example for you to use because it doesn't have a secondary airport and handles double the number of movements as Pearson.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Folks lets calm down a bit here. From what I have researched construction will begin around 2027 and it will initially be a GA airport to replace Buttonville. It will eventually expand to full commercial airline service when needed. So I think we are looking at approx 2045 before we can even begin to expect to see 737's 380's etc landing at Pickering...

 

[taal]

Look at aircraft movements in peak hours though.

An A480 and a little 8 seater take nearly an equal amount of runway space.

Heathrow is blessed with both unusually large aircraft (smaller aircraft use other London airports) and a spread out load. Pearson experiences a rather dramatic morning and evening commuter period.

+ 1

I hate when people bring up the 2 runway argument ... it comes down to this exactly ! In Europe in general, the aircraft used are much larger on the whole.
Just compare the fleets of various airlines !

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Folks lets calm down a bit here. From what I have researched construction will begin around 2027 and it will initially be a GA airport to replace Buttonville. It will eventually expand to full commercial airline service when needed. So I think we are looking at approx 2045 before we can even begin to expect to see 737's 380's etc landing at Pickering...

Accoriding to The Star, the airport will be operational by 2027. Construction has to begin fairly soon.

 

[CDL.TO]

That was part of the problem with Mirabel. The Province failed to build any decent access roads so the already long trip there from downtown took a very long time.

Autoroute 15 goes pretty might right to Mirabel. More roads wouldn't have solved anything. You just can't avoid that Mirabel is 55km from Place Ville-Marie (imagine the cab fare!) while Dorval is only 19km.

Marc Dufour is right... in all likelihood Mirabel was an airport killed by the lack of a train.

 

[CDL.TO]

+ 1

I hate when people bring up the 2 runway argument ... it comes down to this exactly ! In Europe in general, the aircraft used are much larger on the whole.
Just compare the fleets of various airlines !

How about Aircraft Movements? LAX had 667,000 aircraft movements with 4 parallel runways (2 independent pairs). YYZ had 418,000 movements with 3 parallel (one pair and one single), and is approved to expand to 2 pairs.

As far as I can see it, we have a lot of room to grow at YYZ.

http://www.aci.aero/Data-Centre/Annual-Traffic-Data/Movements/2010-final

 

[kEiThZ]

Uggh. Aircraft movements are not a linear calculation.

They are very much influenced by local factors: local winds, traffic mix, runway conditions, etc.

It's quite misleading to compare Pearson to Heathrow.

 

[CDL.TO]

Uggh. Aircraft movements are not a linear calculation.

They are very much influenced by local factors: local winds, traffic mix, runway conditions, etc.

It's quite misleading to compare Pearson to Heathrow.

OK, that may be true, but is there any reason to believe that Pearson is actually nearing capacity?