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How ironic. "Let's expand Oshawa's airport", "don't expand the island airport!"

wrt to Hamilton: It also suffers from a bit of a flooded secondary airport market. Kitchener Waterloo airport, London airport, Sarnia airport, Windsor, Buffalo Niagara airport (US), Cleveland (US), and even Rochester are all within (or close to) a 250 km radius around Munro and have scheduled service, making it difficult to attract passengers. Consolidating Kitchener Waterloo, and London with Munro alone would yield an airport with approx 218 000 aircraft movements and 953 000 passengers. However I wonder if any two of those communities would be willing to accept a closure of significant reduction of service at their airport for the benefit of consolidating somewhere else: Hamilton would have the proximity to Toronto/GTA and the largest population base but it's proximity to the US border causes it to suffer some bleeding of passengers into the US (read Buffalo) airports, Kitchener Waterloo can claim the tech sector there needs access to the airport and they have the greatest number of aircraft movements as justification, although it has the fewest passengers, London has the most passenger movements and is far enough away from Toronto that it could justify having it's own airport. Each could probably make an equal claim to be the best site of the consolidated airport. Also, I wonder, if consolidated, would our ground transportation network be able to handle all the new travel activity between the three centres.

Re. Oshawa. I don't see how you would be able to expand the airport at Oshawa. It's main runway 12/30 is only 1200 m long, Pearson's shortest runway is 2700 m. Any extension of Oshawa's runway to that length would plow through the houses nearby, even at 2000 m the runway would encroach on the creek/stream in the vicinity
 
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My point about Oshawa was regarding eastern freight, business and travel activity which proponents of pickering like to hypothesize about. Yo build in pickering would mean the loss of large swaths of grade A highly productive farmland. To extend in Oshawa would mean paving over a river system With nearby residential. Both have issues. I'm not saying they are unilaterally better than the other.

Regarding the island airport I'm against expansion for a host of reasons, many of which have been described by people in this forum. I recognize however that by advocating for more air traffic at other other sites there are tradeoffs there as well. I live and have always lived directly under the Pearson flight paths. I have no issue with more traffic there considering it was built and expanded with public and private funds to accept more GTA air traffic.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
I simply do not agree with building Pickering at all. Why are we paving our farmland for a new airport? Expand existing airports, don't build a new one!

Don't people on this board care about the environment?

Oh I guess it IS URBANtoronto.ca
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Context is important. Pickering is going to be built. The closure of Buttonville. The likely closure of Markham and Oshawa as well means that GA traffic needs an airfield. That will be Pickering.

However, a small airport in Pickering won't actually do all that much to damage greenspace. Indeed, I think the reason that whole area hasn't been paved over with subdivisions is ironically because it was set aside for an airport. What we should try and avoid though is the effort to expand Pickering beyond a small GA airport to a larger commercial entity. And that will happen only if the Island is closed in my opinion.
 
mrxbombastic said:
Perhaps folks here know better, but why isn't Oshawa airport expanded for freight purposes? At a quick Google maps glance the airport doesn't seem to be constrained by much development and the runways have room to expand. There is a large manufacturing base in Durham and Oshawa seems well positioned to serves it.
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innsertnamehere said:
Pickering as a passenger airport doesn't make sense at all, and won't for a long long while. what it does make sense for is a freight airport to take the pressure off of Pearson (allowing more passenger movements) as well as general aviation which after the closure of Buttonville is being forced out to locations like Greenbank.
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Lots of misunderstanding of the freight business here. The majority of freight actually arrives in the bellies of passenger aircraft these days. And a good chunk of it also ends up being intermodal so to speak, with cargo arriving on a freighter and then moving out in the belly of a passenger aircraft. As such, when you separate the operations, you will add lots of cost. The only freighters who could move would be the package freighters (UPS, Fedex, etc.). But even they may end up with some additional costs.

Indeed, this is not widely understood outside of the aviation world, but the most profitable airlines are the ones that can combine their cargo and passenger businesses. This is why Emirates is now one of the largest freight carriers in the world, despite having only a handful of freight aircraft. Ditto for Lufthansa. Air Canada also has a very healthy freight business.
 
TOareaFan said:
Can't be sure, but that post can be read as "let's expand the airport that is bordered on 3 sides by residential neighborhoods but don't expand the other that has residential on one side" ;)
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Ford-worthy logic. "It's just a streetcar!!"

Expand the airports that are further away from where most people live and work. Simple.
 
My Oshawa remark was with regards to a so-called pent up freight demand in the east that some proponents of pickering advocate. Read my follwing posts and you'll better understand my position
 
mrxbombastic said:
Perhaps folks here know better, but why isn't Oshawa airport expanded for freight purposes? At a quick Google maps glance the airport doesn't seem to be constrained by much development and the runways have room to expand. There is a large manufacturing base in Durham and Oshawa seems well positioned to serves it.
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mrxbombastic said:
My Oshawa remark was with regards to a so-called pent up freight demand in the east that some proponents of pickering advocate. Read my follwing posts and you'll better understand my position
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Quite simply put, the pent-up demand would not justify the business case for that kind of expansion. The pent-up demand is to supply a few autoparts plants. That kind of cargo traffic comes in bulk on larger aircraft, which require much longer runways. And that kind of cargo also needs frequencies, which Oshawa will never be able to support, because there won't be much other cargo business. Long story short, there's no business case for it. And that's before you consider the loss of intermodal capability with the passenger airlines operating at Pearson, which is the reason Hamilton hasn't really taken off as a cargo hub.

If there was so much pent-up demand, you'd already be seeing cargo being flown in today regularly. The only way something like this would work is if you could convince Fedex or UPS or someone that big to relocate from Pearson. And that will never happen in an airport the size of a postage stamp. I know. I've flown at Oshawa. The restrictions are too many. Not as bad as the Island, of course. But very restricted. And rightly so, given how much residential build-up there is. I can't see any sane resident in that area having tolerance for heavy cargo traffic. Keep in mind also that freight carriers have a habit of getting last generation aircraft on the cheap. So they really are the worst for noise and fuel burn. And they also like to operate as late as possible...overnight if possible.

In any event, cargo just isn't the issue for air traffic in the GTA. Cargo flights aren't clogging up the airspace. It's GA and scheduled pax carrier traffic. This is why I think a GA airport at Pickering makes sense. The land at Oshawa and Buttonville can developed. Pickering will consolidate all GA traffic in the eastern GTA. And it can be built to handle the odd larger aircraft for bizjet and light cargo traffic. But accomodating something like Porter means a much larger airport than that. Extra runways, spread further apart, larger aprons and taxiways, etc.
 
Yup thanks everyone for clearing up my Oshawa ideas. Still mostly against Pickering but that is another discussion for another day.
 
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Some questions:
1) Didn't the federal government get out of the airport business in the 90s?
2) Why should tax dollars be used to develop a GA airport for what is essentially a hobby, while not funding public transportation?
3) Is the Fed Gov only really developing Pickering Airport because it's near Jim Flaherty's riding and his train to Peterbourgh is now going nowhere?

Just asking.
 
I can agree to federal agencies funding airport initial basic construction and ownership and an operator funding construction And leasing a terminal to their size needs through an AIF.

That said though I do feel largely that this is flahrety thumping his chest reviving old plans as a swan song before he exits govt.
 
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yes pickering is still 15 years off as well. I feel the "reannouncement" had more to do with allocating some of the lands to Rouge park than it did with the airport itself.
 
RC8 said:
Ford-worthy logic. "It's just a streetcar!!"

Expand the airports that are further away from where most people live and work. Simple.
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Airports need passengers and business to fill the seats and cargo holds of the aircraft that land there. Putting airport as far away from the residents and businesses that will use/need the airport means that there will be some long trips (by car/taxi/train/freighter) to the airport contributing to, wait for it, more congestion and pollution on our roads and rails.

It's not a trivial solution and I would never suggest plopping a major airport in the middle of a built up area, however in the case of Porter the airport was already there what's wrong with using it.

It's king of like moving in next to a rail line "oh isn't this nice, a long semi natural site with birds and plants and trees. Wait what do you mean you plan to operate trains on this rail line. That's what the rail line is for? Oh hell no you aren't going to ruin my quant sanctuary!"
 
Vaucluse said:
Some questions:
1) Didn't the federal government get out of the airport business in the 90s?
2) Why should tax dollars be used to develop a GA airport for what is essentially a hobby, while not funding public transportation?
3) Is the Fed Gov only really developing Pickering Airport because it's near Jim Flaherty's riding and his train to Peterbourgh is now going nowhere?

Just asking.
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1) No. The federal government got out of the business of micromanaging the airports. They didn't get out of the airport business. And why would they? They take in almost a billion in revenue every year from airport rents. An abhorrent hidden tax on passengers. But it's what is keeping them in the business.

2) GA is not a hobby. Where do you think the pilots for our airlines, our bush planes, our firefighting aircraft, etc. come from? GA also includes a lot of unscheducled commercial activity. In short, GA is a big part of our national aviation infrastructure. And since aviation falls under federal jurisdiction, they have a duty to foster GA.

3) Um no. The GTA has a distinct lack of GA facilities. And the busiest one (Buttonville) will be closing down. Oshawa and Markham might follow too. This is why Pickering is needed. The train to Peterborough is another matter.
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
It's king of like moving in next to a rail line "oh isn't this nice, a long semi natural site with birds and plants and trees. Wait what do you mean you plan to operate trains on this rail line. That's what the rail line is for? Oh hell no you aren't going to ruin my quant sanctuary!"
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It's amazing how people in these parts will challenge rail NIMBYs (like opponents of the rail corridor through Weston), but then turn around and complain about YTZ.
 
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