Hoverlink - Toronto to Niagara Hovercraft service starting 2023

[wopchop]

Ferries typically cruise around 30 kph, and the distance from Toronto harbourfront to St Catharines is about 50 km. That leads to a travel time of 1:40 minimum. Frankly, rail service seems like a better bet. You can move more people, in more comfort faster.

There are ferries that go faster than that. For example, the Lake Express across Lake Michigan crosses 130km in 2.5 hrs.
The newer Vancouver (Horseshoe Bay) to Nanaimo high speed ferry will make the 55 km crossing in 70 minutes.

 

[afransen]

the idea is to use hovercraft, which move much quicker than a typical ferry like what goes to the Toronto Islands.

Whether that happens... I don't give it high hopes.

I know that, I thought someone was floating the idea of using a conventional ferry. I agree that the idea likely doesn't hold water (har har).

 

[Allandale25]

From Matt Elliot's City Hall Watcher newsletter:

• The hovercraft dream still has some air in it. Hoverlink Ontario, a company seeking to offer hovercraft transit service on Lake Ontario, connecting Toronto with other GTA municipalities, has reemerged on the lobbyist registry. The company, which last made a Lobbyist Watch appearance in March 2023, is now repped by Broad View Advisory’s Marsha Seca. No communications yet.

 

[Jonny5]

From Matt Elliot's City Hall Watcher newsletter:
The hovercraft dream still has some air in it. Hoverlink Ontario, a company seeking to offer hovercraft transit service on Lake Ontario, connecting Toronto with other GTA municipalities, has reemerged on the lobbyist registry. The company, which last made a Lobbyist Watch appearance in March 2023, is now repped by Broad View Advisory’s Marsha Seca. No communications yet.

How silly. If there was money there to be made, someone would have made it by now. The world is awash in funds to dump on private equity infrastructure schemes like this and if they can't even get a cent of all that money being thrown at anything then it has no valid business plan.
So it's really going to be about getting government subsidies to build it and hope that once it's there it eventually becomes either sustainably profitable, or "too popular to fail" (hence more subsidies or government takeover).