Robert Deluce and the Toronto Port Authority are back with another proposal to bring commercial air service to Toronto Island Airport. For more than twenty five years this issue has remained unresolved. It is time for the city to decide once and for all what kind of waterfront it wants.

1. I couldn’t agree more. I think voters in the city did decide on no bridge in the last election, this time we ought to decide to close the airport altogether. Since Deluce wants to play hardball, maybe the city ought to do the same and simply close Bathurst Street south of Queens Quay, or schedule a great number of “street repairs” on that stretch.

   Posted by  on  02/03  at  09:04 AM

2. It looks as though your statement has more than one unstated premise: it asumes the unity of the waterfront, as though we could not have a mixed-use waterfront, with parks, and residential areas, and one or more transport hubs, including an airport.

   Likewise, the argument appears to assume the disconnection of the waterfront and the city, so that what we do on the waterfront has no effect on the city, and the state of the city does not affect the waterfront.

   Needless to say, I find both assumptions so wrong as to baffle me. The waterfront can fulfill its traditional function as a transportation gateway for Toronto at the same time as it supports its share of parks and residential neighbourhoods. We have over 83 kilometers of waterfront from Mississauga to Pickering; we can dedicate one and a half kilometers to runways.

   In any case, the quality of the waterfront depends on the quality of the city, which means that we have to ask where the air traffic will go if the downtown real estate lobby succeeds in driving the last of it off the waterfront. Obviously, most of the traffic will end up at Pearson, flying low over homes and schools, instead of flying almost exclusively over open water. Many young, struggling families live in Malton and Rexdale, the neighbourhoods closest to the airport. These families have children who need to succeed in school, and anything that provides them a respite from the noise and pollution of Pearson cannot help but benefit the city as a whole.

   Posted by John G. Spragge  on  02/07  at  12:20 PM

3. Thanks for your post John. We’d probably need a separate blog to fully discuss the pros and cons of urban transportation systems and the Toronto waterfront follies. Suffice it to say that as a former de Havilland employee during the development and launch of the Dash-8 series, I know that this innovative Canadian aircraft has had a significant beneficial impact on the environment as it was designed to replace fuel inefficient jet aircraft operating on feeder routes. My hat goes off to former DH President John Sanford and the brilliant engineering and manufacturing teams behind the Dash-8 series.

   My argument has more to do with our inability to decide on a plan for the waterfront and make it happen – no matter whether that includes an airport or not. I personally think a rapid link from downtown to Pearson is a more coherent solution – one supported by best-practices in other major urban centres.

   And your point about the people impacted by the air traffic at Pearson is inherently contradictory as it suggests that more traffic at the TIA will magically reduce noise and pollution around Pearson. That is unlikely to happen.

   Also, re your point about the kilometres of available waterfront… the urban designer in me blanches over this kind of logic. We have the opportunity to make Toronto one of the jewels of the Great Lakes if not the world. Our future economic success as a city may well pivot on how we manage the priceless asset that is the waterfront. To suggest it has no more practical weight than the other 80 kilometres of nearby waterfront is to ignore the facts of city-building.

   Posted by  on  02/08  at  09:55 AM

4. Three points:

   Toronto has at least 40 kilometers of waterfront. Even if I agreed that the lakefront has an intrinsically greater value than, say, the ravines and rivers of Toronto, the waterfront has plenty of room for mixed-use development. The waterfront has always played an important role in transportation; I see no reason to turn around and devote all of it to playgrounds or housing.

   As for your comment about balancing the environmental load of transportation in Toronto: it doesn’t require magic, only elementary logic. Aircraft movements inevitably generate a certain amount of noise and pollution; as you observed, jets generate more noise and pollution than Dash-8 series turbo-props. It follows that if more travellers arrive and leave from Toronto City Centre Airport, fewer will arrive and leave from Pearson (note that this logic holds even if we divert an increasing number of travellers to rail; moving a proportion of the remaining air travellers to City Centre will still mean fewer travellers at Pearson. Since airlines can’t afford to operate planes without passengers, that will lead to fewer aircraft movements at Pearson, and a fairer distribution of the environmental load among different parts of the city.

   Personally, I consider fairness and tolerance the most important asset Toronto posesses; if the children of Rexdale and Malton despair of their future in this city and this country, we might as well build a steel mill on Bathurst Quay. Detroit has a truly magnificent waterfront, complete with a huge park (Bell Island), cultural venues, public transit, and some stunning archtecture, and Detroit has just begun, slowly and painfully, to pull itself out of the despair it fell into forty years ago. A great waterfront does not make a great city.

   Posted by John G. Spragge  on  02/08  at  11:39 AM

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