Deja vu in Hamilton: Invest in airport expansion or rail?
Every Hamiltonian should learn more about Hamilton's looming aerotropolis project. We all know that investing in air travel is not wise, especially as fuel prices continue to rise. We should not be investing in air travel: the least efficient mode of transportation. Doesn't it makes sense to focus our resources instead on sustainable infrastructure within the existing city, instead of paving farmland?. Why should the public pay half a billion dollars to expand a privately-owned airport park expansion, instead of investing in a Light Rail System that benefits the citizens? The short-sighted airport project will benefit a few, yet negatively impact all of Hamilton's citizens. It's time to speak up as individuals and as representatives of interest groups.Please read the following message (below) from Don McLean, a member of Environment Hamilton's Board of Directors. Please consider registering to speak against Hamilton's Aerotropolis project. Sign-up on the morning of Wed February 15th at the Hamilton Convention Centre. The actual speaking opportunity will be sometime later this year in the fall of 2012. Signing up does not commit you to speaking, but leaves that opportunity open.Thank-you for your time! This issue is of great importance.
Peter Ormond
Message from Don McLean:
February 1, 2012
Dear Hamilton Community Stakeholders,
The Hamilton Civic League is sharing Environment Hamilton’s request to ask you, your association or your business to consider registering as a "participant" at the Ontario Municipal Board (OM
hearing on the City of Hamilton's Airport Employment Growth District (aka the "aerotropolis").
Registrations were closed but a city error has opened the doors for more groups to formally comment on the aerotropolis plans. All you have to do is send a representative to a meeting on Wed. February 15th at 10:00 a.m. at the Hamilton Convention Centre to register as a participant. This will entitle you to make a written and oral statement to the OMB expressing your views on the plan no earlier than this fall.
Participant status does not require attending all the OMB hearings, and participants are not subject to cross-examination. You don't need a lawyer or a planner or a significant amount of time--you just need to care about the future of the city and the impact a planning decision of this magnitude will have on your neighbourhood.
Why should you care?
- Hamilton is already $2 billion in the hole for infrastructure maintenance. City officials admit that repairs to existing roads, recreation centres, seniors’ centres, affordable housing, transit and other city-operated facilities are being postponed or abandoned because we can't afford them. If we were to pay for fixing what's already broken it would amount to a permanent 25 per cent tax hike.
- Aerotropolis requires at least $500 million in NEW roads, pipes and other infrastructure. The priorities are wrong here. We should fix what we have before we gamble on an airport-centred field of dreams.
- From 1971 to 2006 Hamilton lost nearly a quarter of its farmland – a rate four times faster than the rest of southern Ontario. Virtually all of the aerotropolis lands are zoned agricultural. We need to protect the sources of our local food, especially when climate change is threatening global food security.
- Hamilton has over 1500 acres of empty greenfield business parks already – a 30 year supply at current development rates. One of them is the 250 acre Airport Business Park established in 1992 that has never attracted even one new business in its twenty years of existence. The trucking, warehousing and wholesale trade operations that are proposed for the aerotropolis could and should be located on existing industrial lands where roads, sewers, water pipes, transit and other city-funded infrastructure already exists.
- The airport has lost passengers every year since 2004 and last year had less than 200,000 passengers (385,000 total trips). City officials predict that the airport will soon become one of the five largest in Canada and carry 9-10 million passengers a year. This doesn't seem likely.
For more information on the aerotropolis, see http://www.aerotropoliscosts.
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