Would you spend $50 million to save 4 minutes?
The Toronto Port Authority (TPA) is ladling out the gravy again to Porter Airlines, its passengers and other companies using the Island Airport.
A Globe and Mail article in the March 14th issue reports that the TPA intends to build a pedestrian tunnel at the cost of $50 million and this will save passengers using the Island Airport an average of 4 minutes. This is the link to the Globe article.
CommunityAIR members have been following this story closely and there are a couple of clarifications to the Globe story that we feel compelled to make.
- The $50 million estimate is a ball park guess at best. Apparently the engineering has not been completed and only then will an accurate estimate be known. In the short history of the project the estimated costs have risen from $20 million (Toronto Star, June 3, 2009) to $50 million and could well end closer to $65 million. No one knows for sure.
- The Globe story estimates that it will shorten a trip by 4 minutes, but the consultant's report that the Globe bases its story on, makes no mention of the time saved. It says that, "The ferry is not a capacity issue," and, "The pedestrian tunnel would somewhat reduce congestion."
So the consultants are saying the ferry is perfectly capable of servicing the needs of the passengers. In fact the TPA does not plan to stop the ferry service once the tunnel is built in order to save money. They will have to keep it operating so the vehicles can access the airport. This is a subsidy, clear and simple, and a benefit to the users of the airport, not the public at large, and the improvement to airport access is marginal at best.
What the consultants point out is that the real congestion problems are not getting across the Western Gap to the airport. "The groundside facilities are congested and too small for the variety of operations occurring in this area." They list the following causes of congestion: vehicles, parking, taxis, shuttle bus, ferry vehicle loading, passenger pick-up and drop-off and pedestrian public access. All of these are major problems and the pedestrian tunnel will do nothing to solve them.
The reality is there is no solution to this congestion. The city side area is simply too small to accommodate the traffic going to and from the airport. So the TPA is going to build a tunnel to the Island Airport that will do nothing to solve the major congestion problems caused by the location of the airport adjacent to a busy neighbourhood.
This is what Brian Iler, the chair of CommunityAIR is quoted as saying in the article, "Spending what appears to be upwards of $50 million for a bit of smoothing of passenger flow to the Island Airport is an incredible waste of public assets."
More gravy for Porter and the small band of passengers and companies using the Island Airport. What do the government subsidies to the Island Airport total? Sorry, we have lost count.
Bill Freeman
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