The eighth item in this series looked at the Toronto Port Authority’s (TPA) claims about the community’s response to the TPA announced noise barriers.  This instalment looks at TPA’s belief that the ambient street noise is louder than noise produced at the airport.  http://www.torontoport.com/PortAuthority/media_content.asp?id=439

The TPA version

Fact: The independent sound measurements confirm that the loudest sounds in the BBTCA (Billy Bishop Toronto Centre Airport) area come from motorcycles and other motor vehicles using Queen’s Quay and the Gardiner Expressway, not aircraft. This data was shared and discussed with the NMSAG.   This data can be found on Page II-9 of the Jacobs Consultancy study.

The CommunityAIR version

The noise readings that the TPA refer to are contained in one of six tables of noise readings in the Jacobs Consultancy interim report produced for the July 14, 2009 meeting.  Page II-1 of the study states, “As a result of consultations with the NMSAG and the TPA, the scope of the study was broadened to include the development of an acoustical model of the general TCCA operating area and surrounding communities.”  In other words, the TPA’s consultants, at the request of the advisory group, established a noise profile for the airport’s neighbours, a snapshot of what people living around the airport hear on an everyday basis.

The TPA’s consultants based the noise profile on airport’s general operating area and its surrounding communities.  It set up noise monitors in six different locations and produced a table of data for each of the six.

In early June 2009 the TPA chose to use the data from one table for a purpose other than that intended by the study.  Even before the data were shown to the NMSAG, the TPA used the data on Page II-9 to further their argument for a tunnel to the airport.   

The TPA chose to isolate the table on the page and use readings from that table to make the point above, that the loudest sounds in the BBTCA area come from motorcycles and other motor vehicles using Queen’s Quay and the Gardiner Expressway, not aircraft.

The table on Page II-9 records readings from Location 5 (M5) - City Place development, approximately 50 m north of Gardiner Expressway.  The data recorded was taken with winds at the time blowing from north to south, from the Gardiner towards the airport, thus mitigating the intensity of the noise reaching those monitors from the airport.  Nevertheless, the TPA chose to use the data on that table and to give no recognition to a graph reading, Figure 10, that shows a Q-400 take-off concurrent to the spike in the recording attributed to a motorcycle.  

To reiterate, the TPA chose to cite one page of data, Page II-9, from one location, and chose to ignore data from the other five locations.  All the noise recording data are contained in Pages II-5 to II-10 of the study.  Ignoring the data gather at the other five locations in order to create their fact as stated above and to promote the building of a tunnel appears to be manipulative.  It certainly doesn’t honour the NMSAG’s intended purpose of the study.

The TPA states, “This data was shared and discussed with the NMSAG.”  The TPA did so on July 14, a month after they released certain portions to the media without the NMSAG’s prior knowledge thus blindsiding group members.  As a result, the community reps requested that all communications as to the committee’s work be approved by the committee prior to their release. The TPA refused.

Bob Kotyk