[nfitz]

See above. The inverse of this is also a general principle. People who say things counter to their own self interest are generally more reliable sources. It would be irresponsible to take the port authority at face value without seeing the concrete plans.

We've seen the plans - or at least figures.

Why do you think the runway is extending further out into the inner harbour?

The Nimbys are the ones who perceive they have something to gain. They've been caught in several lies. To be losting that contest to Ford suggests that the Nimbys have no case - and know it.

Is this Canada or the PRC? Should people with concerns just keep their mouths shut until the dredges start digging fill for the extension?

Where did I say that? I'm just saying those with concerns shouldn't become lying Nimbys - as it only makes the government not take opposition seriously.

There's an opportunity now to negotiate limits on noise levels and runway slots. And operating hours. But the government currently doesn't have to have that discussion, because a lot of what they've been accused of is so bizarre and wrong, that they don't have to take it serously.

At the moment, if they back down on the big extension to the east, building heights, and give back most of the Toronto Islands to the city - except perhaps a sliver of Hanlons Beach being kept in a natural state as a security buffer - then they have the appearance of making huge concessions, but haven't done a thing.

Whoever is managing this file at Queens Park is a genius, and the Nimbys are playing right into their hand!

 

[Admiral Beez]

Thank God an expanded airport on landfill south of the Island isn’t being considered

From a SimCity POV, I can see the appeal, we're on a lake, why not put the airport out there, like Japan's Kansai International Airport?

Now, the hard part. Unlike the 18m – 20m depth of water off Kansai, Lake Ontario depths drop past the island, estimated to be up to 100m deep 5 km south of the Toronto islands. KIX used approximately 430 million cubic metres of fill material, which would require more fill material than almost all of Toronto's 20th-century downtown construction combined. The largest excavation in Canadian history, the St. Lawrence Seaway moved only 160 million cubic metres of fill.

 

[urbanclient]

From a SimCity POV, I can see the appeal, we're on a lake, why not put the airport out there, like Japan's Kansai International Airport?

View attachment 735118

Now, the hard part. Unlike the 18m – 20m depth of water off Kansai, Lake Ontario depths drop past the island, estimated to be up to 100m deep 5 km south of the Toronto islands. KIX used approximately 430 million cubic metres of fill material, which would require more fill material than almost all of Toronto's 20th-century downtown construction combined. The largest excavation in Canadian history, the St. Lawrence Seaway moved only 160 million cubic metres of fill.

I know you say this in jest, but Toronto had favourable, flat geography (in abundance historically) that allows for airports like Pearson to be built. Kansai was built to allow 24-hour operations in the midst of a land shortage etc...

 

[ear2ear]

From a SimCity POV, I can see the appeal, we're on a lake, why not put the airport out there, like Japan's Kansai International Airport?

View attachment 735118

Now, the hard part. Unlike the 18m – 20m depth of water off Kansai, Lake Ontario depths drop past the island, estimated to be up to 100m deep 5 km south of the Toronto islands. KIX used approximately 430 million cubic metres of fill material, which would require more fill material than almost all of Toronto's 20th-century downtown construction combined. The largest excavation in Canadian history, the St. Lawrence Seaway moved only 160 million cubic metres of fill.

Lol. Yes, the perfect sunk cost fallacy metaphor (and still sinking):

(In all seriousness, this thread has led me to wonder a lot more about the viability of Hamilton airport expansion for GTHA capacity growth. I imagine it would require a better rail link between nodes, but a superficial glance leads me to think there's at least some potential there.)

 

[Admiral Beez]

I know you say this in jest, but Toronto had favourable, flat geography (in abundance historically) that allows for airports like Pearson to be built. Kansai was built to allow 24-hour operations in the midst of a land shortage etc...

Which is why we should have built the Pickering airport, to serve the east GTA.

(In all seriousness, this thread has led me to wonder a lot more about the viability of Hamilton airport expansion for GTHA capacity growth. I imagine it would require a better rail link between nodes, but a superficial glance leads me to think there's at least some potential there.)

Pearson is ideally placed to serve the west GTHA area. It's east of the GTA that needs an airport.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Hamilton has been around for decades with a revolving door of airlines trying to make a go of operating there. A train connection (which would be wildly expensive as it is not close at all to any existing rail corridors) is not going to change that, especially given it's target audience which is mostly suburban 905 areas.

Whenever the Province upgrades Highway 6 to a freeway that will help a small bit.. but Hamilton is never going to become a major secondary airport like Billy Bishop might be able to.

 

[ear2ear]

Which is why we should have built the Pickering airport, to serve the east GTA.

Pearson is ideally placed to serve the west GTHA area. It's east of the GTA that needs an airport.

Obviously I'm very much wish casting, but if we were to get serious about building out nodal and city connections, I don't think immediate proximity to existing low density populations is the most important factor as to where our runways are located. I'm reminded of the number of times I've connected through Frankfurt or Heathrow (or even Heathrow and Gatwick) and never stepped foot into the actual cities themselves. We can quibble about what constitutes a major secondary airport, but Hamilton seems* to at least offer the potential for expansion without all the net negatives that plague the Billy Bishop expansion plans. And unlike Pickering, it at least exists.

(*I have zero expertise here)

 

[just east of the creek]

Which is why we should have built the Pickering airport, to serve the east GTA.

Pearson is ideally placed to serve the west GTHA area. It's east of the GTA that needs an airport.

With respect, Toronto does not need a second airport. What Pearson needs, is a build out on Terminal 3. And it needs the airport node that would connect GO, VIA, local transit (TTC etc) and eventually, when we stop beating ourselves up over the notion of HSR rail, we he ALTO (or whatever) connection through London to Windsor, and across the city, easterly to wherever (Arguably this should be built first, long before you start building Montreal to Ottawa) Pearson has plenty of room to grow. We need politicians to stick to pragmatic policies, not spa themed images of themselves.

 

[urbanclient]

Hamilton has been around for decades with a revolving door of airlines trying to make a go of operating there. A train connection (which would be wildly expensive as it is not close at all to any existing rail corridors) is not going to change that, especially given it's target audience which is mostly suburban 905 areas.

Whenever the Province upgrades Highway 6 to a freeway that will help a small bit.. but Hamilton is never going to become a major secondary airport like Billy Bishop might be able to.

Transit connectivity to the Hamilton airport is awful. The airport facilities are also barebones. It's no wonder the airport never got off the ground. The same argument that says Hamilton is too close to Pearson means Hamilton would also be close enough to serve as a secondary airport. (It really is quite close, 30-40 min drive without traffic, 40-50 from airport to airport),

It cannot be considered too close and too far at the same time. If it's too close as to lose all air traffic to Pearson, then that means it's close enough to siphon air traffic from Pearson.

A city gets big enough, it naturally has a thriving and large secondary airport. Not a tiny one like Billy Bishop that can barely handle a 737 Max (if at all), even after expansion. London, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Tokyo, Seoul, New York, Moscow. Istanbul, Osaka, and Bangkok come to mind as well.

There's been no real incentive or political motivation to relieve Pearson. @just east of the creek The GTHA population has been too small to warrant it. If the Century Initiative happens, that's another story.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Even Pearson has transit modal shares of something like 10% - transit connections to airports matter a lot less than you are portraying. Most people drive or are driven to airports, especially an airport somewhere like Hamilton.

Hamilton's terminal is small but should easily be able to support 1-2 million annual passengers.. last year it was 300,000. It's not really the problem. The problem is that it's located on the far edge of the GTHA and being a smaller airport can only offer inferior flight schedules, without really significant cost savings either.

Porter is trying to make a go of it right now and we will see how that works for them, they may be able to work out a niche market serving the western GGH with a focus on domestic and the highest volume routes, but generally Hamilton has sat underutilized for decades for a reason.

Billy Biship comparatively also can't offer extensive connections and direct flight routes - but it does have a huge locational advantage over Pearson. Which is the exact opposite of Hamilton.

 

[just east of the creek]

Transit connectivity to the Hamilton airport is awful. The airport facilities are also barebones. It's no wonder the airport never got off the ground. The same argument that says Hamilton is too close to Pearson means Hamilton would also be close enough to serve as a secondary airport. (It really is quite close, 30-40 min drive without traffic, 40-50 from airport to airport),

It cannot be considered too close and too far at the same time. If it's too close as to lose all air traffic to Pearson, then that means it's close enough to siphon air traffic from Pearson.

A city gets big enough, it naturally has a thriving and large secondary airport. Not a tiny one like Billy Bishop that can barely handle a 737 Max (if at all), even after expansion. London, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Tokyo, Seoul, New York, Moscow. Istanbul, Osaka, and Bangkok come to mind as well.

There's been no real incentive or political motivation to relieve Pearson. @just east of the creek The GTHA population has been too small to warrant it. If the Century Initiative happens, that's another story.

I think you edited out Guangzhou as I was typing, but no matter, Chengdu will suffice. Both of those urban areas have populations in excess of 20 million people. And the airport to be built or that already exist, will have or do have a variety of transit options at the terminal, including connections to HSR. Insert that connection with both Pearson and Hamilton and the need for any other airport vanishes. Insert that connection and the choice of travel to your airport is not automatically the car.

 

[Mihairokov]

Pearson is ideally placed to serve the west GTHA area. It's east of the GTA that needs an airport.

I thought the East traffic didn't warrant it, hence why Pickering is dead.

I think you edited out Guangzhou as I was typing, but no matter, Chengdu will suffice. Both of those urban areas have populations in excess of 20 million people. And the airport to be built or that already exist, will have or do have a variety of transit options at the terminal, including connections to HSR. Insert that connection with both Pearson and Hamilton and the need for any other airport vanishes. Insert that connection and the choice of travel to your airport is not automatically the car.

YHM can easily be built out as the secondary GTA airport if it's provided adequate transportation connections to both Hamilton and YYZ. Some cities provide airport-to-airport connections well (Shanghai, Tokyo, New York(?)) and others less so (London). Currently it's possible to transfer from YTZ to YYZ in like ~40 minutes, which I had to do a few months ago last minute. I imagine YHM to YYZ could be very straightforward if we set our minds to it.

If we think YHM is too close and too much of the same local coverage market there is always YKF waiting in the wings, which is both further west and serving a larger "local" direct population.

 

[urbanclient]

Most people drive or are driven to airports, especially an airport somewhere like Hamilton.

You're missing all the points I'm making. Even if most of what you're saying is true.

I can tell you right now, it's nowhere near 10% for Hamilton. Wouldn't surprise me if transit usage is less than 1% for flyers.

Also, it's not 10% for Pearson. It's 13% for passengers, and something like 14 to 17% for employees. So you're comparing next to 0 to about 1 in 6, 1 in 7. Lack of transit connectivity is also a closer proxy for economic/demographic isolation, less so geographic isolation.

https://cdn.torontopearson.com/-/media/project/pearson/content/community/supporting-communities/pdfs/union-station-west_final.pdf

https://cdn.torontopearson.com/-/media/project/pearson/content/corporate/our-future/pdfs/growth-connectivity-capacity.pdf

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1-2 million is not worth it. When I spoke of large secondary airports, we're talking 20+ million passengers a year. Main airport being 30-40+ million.

but it does have a huge locational advantage over Pearson. Which is the exact opposite of Hamilton.

Agreed on the first point, conditional no to the second: If you look at the list of cities I gave, the distance between Hamilton & Pearson and between Hamilton & downtown Toronto are not even close to being the longest. In fact, Hamilton is relatively close to both Pearson and Toronto.

Again I'm not saying Hamilton needs to expanded ASAP. Like I said, GTHA's current population does not warrant a large secondary airport. Hamilton's location and physical room for expansion makes it suitable in the (far) future to be the secondary airport.
------------------------------------------------------------------

You're saying Hamilton doesn't attract passengers/airlines because it sucks. It sucks because it doesn't attract passengers/airlines. This logic appears circular: Hamilton sucks, therefore it will continue to suck. Well why does it suck? (besides the symptoms of it sucking doubling as the cause).

Hamilton sucks because it hasn't been expanded, it's barebones and will likely remain that way until Pearson is severely overcapacity, since futureproofing is clearly not Ontario's strong suit for anything but roads and highways. If they received more investment in terms of transit, highways, and facilities so to stop looking like an old bus terminal with a parking lot in (insert third-world country here), I'm sure more passengers and airlines would flock to it.

See below:

There's been no real incentive or political motivation to relieve Pearson [with Hamilton] @just east of the creek The GTHA population has been too small to warrant it. If the Century Initiative happens, that's another story.

I personally think it'd be better than Pickering because more of the GTHA population is in the west to begin with. I don't see future population growth flocking to the east.

I think you edited out Guangzhou as I was typing, but no matter, Chengdu will suffice.

I edited out Guangzhou because it's not built yet, it was from the list of large cities with future secondary airports. Post was too wordy.

Insert that connection with both Pearson and Hamilton and the need for any other airport vanishes.

I'm not understanding here, do you mind clarifying?

Both of those urban areas have populations in excess of 20 million people.

Guangzhou's secondaries were Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The wider metropolis is probably the largest on the planet, larger than Tokyo and Jakarta. On Guangzhou getting another airport in Foshan: if anything, we should be asking why it didn't get another one sooner (Foshan is technically not Guangzhou, but you get my point).

I was once trapped in Guangzhou's airport post-covid for an hour because my Chinese-Uber never found me because the pick up area traffic was so insane. I gave up and took the subway. The next time around, I flew to Shenzhen because its airport had better transit (at the time), since I realized Ubers were a shitshow. Guangzhou's airport is older, less transit oriented (subway requires a transfer + 1.5 hours to reach the main train station), and is farther from its respective downtown than Shenzhen.

We're talking 60 million people in an area the size of the "core" Golden Horseshoe (~11,000 sqkm), with only 3 airports the size of Pearson. Pearson serves the vast majority of the Golden Horseshoe for about 10 million people (yes Buffalo exists). The wider Pearl River delta is 86+ million over 55,000 sqkm.

Chengdu is 14,000 sqkm, for 20 million people. Physically larger than the "core" Golden Horseshoe. It having 2 major international airports makes total sense.

Chengdu Tianfu airport also happens to be virtually the same driving distance from Shuangliu airport and Chengdu's downtown, as Hamilton John Munro is to Pearson and Toronto's downtown. Even Pearson is practically the same distance to downtown as Shuangliu is to Chengdu's downtown. Which is exactly the point I'm getting at. That John Munro's location is decent for large secondary airport.

It seems we all agree that YTZ is ill-suited to become a large international airport.

Also, Tianfu is way more in the boonies than John Munro is, but there is a rail connection to both the city and the other airport (that cuts through rural areas).

Also wanted to clarify that 20 million people isn't for something the size of Toronto or the GTA or GTHA. The area/pop. density is more relevant.

 

[Admiral Beez]

With respect, Toronto does not need a second airport.

I always considered Buffalo as Toronto's second international airport. Get the Maple Leaf train moving faster and more frequently and redirect the line through the terminal.

 

[just east of the creek]

You're missing all the points I'm making. Even if most of what you're saying is true.

I can tell you right now, it's nowhere near 10% for Hamilton. Wouldn't surprise me if transit usage is less than 1% for flyers.

Also, it's not 10% for Pearson. It's 13% for passengers, and something like 14 to 17% for employees. So you're comparing next to 0 to about 1 in 6, 1 in 7. Lack of transit connectivity is also a closer proxy for economic/demographic isolation, less so geographic isolation.

https://cdn.torontopearson.com/-/media/project/pearson/content/community/supporting-communities/pdfs/union-station-west_final.pdf

https://cdn.torontopearson.com/-/media/project/pearson/content/corporate/our-future/pdfs/growth-connectivity-capacity.pdf

--------------------------------------------------------------------

1-2 million is not worth it. When I spoke of large secondary airports, we're talking 20+ million passengers a year. Main airport being 30-40+ million.


Agreed on the first point, conditional no to the second: If you look at the list of cities I gave, the distance between Hamilton & Pearson and between Hamilton & downtown Toronto are not even close to being the longest. In fact, Hamilton is relatively close to both Pearson and Toronto.

Again I'm not saying Hamilton needs to expanded ASAP. Like I said, GTHA's current population does not warrant a large secondary airport. Hamilton's location and physical room for expansion makes it suitable in the (far) future to be the secondary airport.
------------------------------------------------------------------

You're saying Hamilton doesn't attract passengers/airlines because it sucks. It sucks because it doesn't attract passengers/airlines. This logic appears circular: Hamilton sucks, therefore it will continue to suck. Well why does it suck? (besides the symptoms of it sucking doubling as the cause).

Hamilton sucks because it hasn't been expanded, it's barebones and will likely remain that way until Pearson is severely overcapacity, since futureproofing is clearly not Ontario's strong suit for anything but roads and highways. If they received more investment in terms of transit, highways, and facilities so to stop looking like an old bus terminal with a parking lot in (insert third-world country here), I'm sure more passengers and airlines would flock to it.

See below:


I personally think it'd be better than Pickering because more of the GTHA population is in the west to begin with. I don't see future population growth flocking to the east.


I edited out Guangzhou because it's not built yet, it was from the list of large cities with future secondary airports. Post was too wordy.


I'm not understanding here, do you mind clarifying?


Guangzhou's secondaries were Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The wider metropolis is probably the largest on the planet, larger than Tokyo and Jakarta. On Guangzhou getting another airport in Foshan: if anything, we should be asking why it didn't get another one sooner (Foshan is technically not Guangzhou, but you get my point).

I was once trapped in Guangzhou's airport post-covid for an hour because my Chinese-Uber never found me because the pick up area traffic was so insane. I gave up and took the subway. The next time around, I flew to Shenzhen because its airport had better transit (at the time), since I realized Ubers were a shitshow. Guangzhou's airport is older, less transit oriented (subway requires a transfer + 1.5 hours to reach the main train station), and is farther from its respective downtown than Shenzhen.

We're talking 60 million people in an area the size of the "core" Golden Horseshoe (~11,000 sqkm), with only 3 airports the size of Pearson. Pearson serves the vast majority of the Golden Horseshoe for about 10 million people (yes Buffalo exists). The wider Pearl River delta is 86+ million over 55,000 sqkm.

Chengdu is 14,000 sqkm, for 20 million people. Physically larger than the "core" Golden Horseshoe. It having 2 major international airports makes total sense.

Chengdu Tianfu airport also happens to be virtually the same driving distance from Shuangliu airport and Chengdu's downtown, as Hamilton John Munro is to Pearson and Toronto's downtown. Even Pearson is practically the same distance to downtown as Shuangliu is to Chengdu's downtown. Which is exactly the point I'm getting at. That John Munro's location is decent for large secondary airport.

It seems we all agree that YTZ is ill-suited to become a large international airport.

Also, Tianfu is way more in the boonies than John Munro is, but there is a rail connection to both the city and the other airport (that cuts through rural areas).

View attachment 735272View attachment 735269

Also wanted to clarify that 20 million people isn't for something the size of Toronto or the GTA or GTHA. The area/pop. density is more relevant.

Guangzhou is an area and an airport I’ve been too more then a few times. The traffic can be brutal, but that can be the scene at many of the larger rail or air terminals. The Guangzhou area generally offers some superior breakfast hole in the wall, sometimes literally, establishment's. I miss those. Outdoors in December. Chilly, cold, recovering from some client inspired festivities from the night (morning) proceeding.

My reference was in establishing an HSR linkage from Munro to Pearson. But the more I think of Munro, the more dubious of this choice I become. If, the big if, HSR was established between Windsor and a Pearson node (it should be Doug Ford), the more interesting secondary airport choice to upgrade and add would be Waterloo Regional. Located on the 401 corridor, locate it on a HSR corridor.

Thanks for all the work on the above post.