Island airport expansion is a change in kind not a change in degree Allowing jets at Billy Bishop would change the nature of airport and compromise all of Toronto's waterfront.
It has been suggested that there should be a “compromise” to resolve the dispute over Toronto’s island airport. After all, this is the Canadian way. Some well-meaning voices say: “I am for state-of-the-art ‘quiet’ jets but against any substantial increase in service; can’t we just limit the volume of flights to protect the livability of the waterfront and surrounding neighbourhoods?” But that option is not on the table.
The proposal is to double the size of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to equal the capacity of Ottawa’s International Airport serving between 4.3 and 4.8 million passengers a year.
Picture runway extensions the length of two football fields at both ends into Toronto Harbour and into the Western Gap, with enlarged exclusion zones to keep boat traffic away. Picture rows of light approach towers extending up to 700 metres beyond the runways as mandated by Transport Canada to accommodate planes landing and taking off every two minutes.
Add to that high and obtrusive walls lining the runways to shield small boats from jet thrust. And on the land side, doubled volumes of traffic carrying passengers, jet fuel, services and supplies overwhelm the already impossibly congested five-point intersection at Bathurst, Lake Shore and Fleet. This on top of noise concerns, impacts on air quality and habitat.
This is not a change in degree; it is a profound change in kind. We are talking about a different kind of airport.
Both the city’s medical officer of health and the board of Waterfront Toronto have sounded the alarm. If an application were made today for a new airport the size of the Ottawa International Airport on the Toronto waterfront, the incompatibility would be perfectly obvious. This doubling (and change in kind) is being rushed through as though it were an incremental modification with no clear applicant, no environmental assessment, no completed master plan, no jet planes certified, no business plan, no infrastructure plan and no funds to implement.
The justifications for the rush to judgment to approve this massive shift are convenience for some business travellers and a purported economic advantage. Both are specious. The net benefits in either case, given the opening of the air- rail link next year, are likely marginal. Much more important is what would be sacrificed.
It is our waterfront. From south Etobicoke to the Scarborough Bluffs and beyond, what is emerging all along the Toronto waterfront is one of the most remarkable transformations of its kind anywhere. The revitalization of these strategically located, obsolescent lands is providing new and improved places for the public to enjoy: parks and trails, a linked series of neighbourhoods, places to live and work, and places of recreation, repose and natural beauty.
By: Ken Greenberg Anne Golden David Crombie Jack Diamond Paul Bedford