Stop the presses! The Star and The Post agree
This may well be the last post on this topic before moving back to our regularly scheduled programming. First of all, welcome to all of the Andy Barrie listeners. The CBC was kind enough to link to our site, and I’m not sure how many of our 6 million hits a year come from that particular neck of the woods, given our primary focus on technology and finance.
In my recollection, the wisdom of building a TCCA pedestrian tunnel is the first topic that the editorial boards of The Toronto Star and The National Post have ever agreed upon.
From The Star:
It still can’t pay for the project – at least, not yet – but Toronto’s port authority is already moving forward on preliminary work for a pedestrian tunnel to the island airport. With good reason.
Construction of the $38 million tunnel would provide enhanced access to the downtown airport, and badly needed jobs. But all this could easily be undone by bureaucratic delay, a prospect that has prompted the Toronto Port Authority to take action. Yesterday it issued a call for proposals to conduct an environmental assessment of the planned work, a step more commonly done when major approvals are in hand.
Given Mayor David Miller’s opposition to island airport expansion, the city isn’t being asked for help. Instead, successful completion of the tunnel depends on delivery of infrastructure stimulus funding, with $19 million sought from Ottawa and $12 million from Queen’s Park. That money has yet to be approved.
The port authority is ready to provide $7 million, but a deadline clock is already ticking on its tunnel project: federal stimulus funding (even though not yet delivered for this work) must be used before March 31, 2011. That doesn’t leave much time, so port authority officials are jumping ahead with the environmental process.
This seems a prudent step in protecting a highly desirable project. The tunnel, to run under the Western Channel, would be fitted with moving sidewalks giving a growing number of airport users a practical alternative to the ferry plying this channel. It would maintain access on days when that ferry can’t run, due to choppy waters, and would give Toronto islanders a year-around connection to the mainland. For all those reasons, this project deserves to proceed with all speed.
From The Post:
As great fans of Porter Airlines, we could hardly be more pleased by a new plan to link Toronto’s City Centre Airport to the mainland with a pedestrian tunnel, which would eliminate the minor but unnecessary inconvenience of a two-minute ferry ride. Sadly, Toronto is still infested with a peculiar breed — led by Mayor David Miller — that believes such an innovation would amount to a sort of civic apocalypse: vastly more flights, a permanent end to waterfront redevelopment, frogs falling from the sky. Mr. Miller’s office reiterated its inexplicable position this week that “a commercial airport is not compatible with [waterfront] revitalization.”
Even sillier is the eye-glazing class warfare rhetoric of NDP MP Olivia Chow and City Councillor Adam Vaughan, who argue the airport serves only a “privileged few.” Whether taxpayers should pay for this tunnel is up for debate, but their arguments are rubbish. Porter’s passengers may be more “privileged” than Air Canada’s in that they don’t have to trudge out to Mississauga for their flight. But as of Tuesday afternoon, Porter was selling a one-way ticket to Montreal for Friday morning for $10 less than Air Canada. An express bus to Pearson International Airport from downtown costs $20, and a taxi at least twice that much. Porter’s check-in desks, meanwhile, are an easy walk from two streetcar routes; or there’s a free shuttle from Union Station. It’s rather clear which airline is more of, and for, the common man.
Thankfully, the world has left the City Centre Airport’s opponents behind. Even the Toronto Star’s editorial board — home to not a few woolly-headed ideas of its own — stands foursquare behind the tunnel, the airport and Porter. There’s no reason a small airport served by quiet planes such as Porter’s Bombardier Q400s should be an impediment to waterfront redevelopment, and there’s no reason a tunnel need result in more flights. Start digging.
Case closed. Fortunately, most Torontonians recognize that we are living through the worst recession in decades. Infrastructure projects are tailored to help dig us out of the global economic mess. And, as the Premier of Ontario has said, 100-year infrastructure projects are worth considering, rather than merely paving a road that will need to be paved again in 5 years. The Star and The Post seem to recognize that.
Time to retire from the mayhem of municipal politics.
MRM
For a city the size of Toronto (with enormous growth potential) the lack of subway infrastructure in Toronto is appalling. There should be at least 3 times the amount of track. Definitely a King or Queen line, Dufferin, Lawrence or Eg, etc, etc… street cars that take up 2 lanes of traffic and take about as much time as walking the same distance, brilliant!
Will the proposed tunnel only provide airport access, or can it be used to get to the rest of the island?
The latter would be fantastic for the entire city – imagine being able to walk, bike or ‘blade to the island without waiting for the ferry (assuming the ferry is even operating, which it wasnt for much of the summer as a result of the strike).
If this could be achieved, it would be a great contribution by the port authority to city life. The increased traffic would be good for tenants at the airport (isnt there a Druxy’s?) and therefore indirectly for the port authority. And it would blow out of the water the argument that this is an elitist project. Can it be done?
As a frequent visitor to Toronto I am appalled at the lack of intelligent discourse regarding Toronto’s planning priorities and infrastructure needs.
I just visited the ROM’s "Crystal" and I have to say that about sums up what Toronto has become: a city held hostage to the ego’s of the rich.
The tunnel to Toronto Island seems to be yet another example: the Bay Street Venture Capitalist leaving his mark by digging a tunnel to Toronto Island!
Meanwhile the infrastucture that actually moves hundreds of thousands of people a day on Toronto’s roads and public transit goes begging!!
But hey good luck with that Mr. McQueen. If you can’t build a bridge to nowhere why not trying digging a tunnel!
Bemused in Kitchener:
"Get a life."
How you could possibly compare the ROM to a tunnel for a commercial airport is beyond me.
Back in the 1980s when I was going to school in Ottawa, I used to fly back and forth from the Island on Air Canada. It was incredibly convenient. Now Porter has taken Air Canada’s terrible service and replaced it with good service along with reasonable prices. The last time I checked, rich people use private jets. Porter’s hardly elitist.
By the way, how much of the $20 billion or so it will cost to build more subways in Toronto are you prepared to pay as an Ontario taxpayer? Very little I’m sure.
Until people like yourself realize the difference between $38 million and $38 billion, I’ll put my money behind the venture capitalist anytime. At least he knows how many zeros go behind the number 38.
Lighten up Mr Ashworth:
As a matter of fact, as a taxpayer of Ontario, of the Region of Waterloo and of the Federal Government I would be prepared to invest in Toronto’s infrastructure. I guess you have never had to suffer the daily grid-lock of a Toronto commute.
My point is if we are going throw public money at infrastructure projects, let’s have some intelligent, future oriented public debate about priorities and commitments. A tunnel to Tornoto island for the sake of half a million passengers a year is not a good use of my taxpayer dollars. A commitment to enhanced public transit in Toronto and the Golden Triangle, on the other hand, is the kind of 100 year project that our children will thank us for.
By the way, I am betting Porter Air will not even be in business in 10 years or if it is we the taxpayers will have given it a bailout. Afterall that tunnel has to lead somewhere doesn’t it! Ottawa I guess…
Imagine two tunnels at the eastern and western gaps that allow for bike and pedestrian traffic, and complete a circumference through the Toronto Islands and the Queens Quay via the port lands.
All the charity runs could be done there.
The Island airport would be services via the western gap tunnell that would exit at Hanlans point.
Imagine the eastern gap tunnel made of an acrylic substance so that an aquarium could be built where the abandoned Rochester Ferry terminal is.
Let’s see.. the TPA were responsible for the building of the Rochester Ferry Terminal. And now a tunnel with moving escalators and pony rides. Scathingly brilliant ideas.
Oh, bemused in Kitchener… we taxpayers have bailed out Porter Airlines… we gave them 20 million when they whined that without a bridge there could be no viable airline business "so compensation please". And the feds keep giving them money…..
And, raging cyclist who wants a Druxy’s meat sandwich … if you think the tunnel will get you to Centre Island, I have a Rochester Ferry Terminal for sale.
Bemused in Kitchener:
Lighten up. I think you’re the one who’s getting a little hot under the collar.
As a matter of fact, as a taxpayer of Ontario, of the Region of Waterloo and of the Federal Government I would be prepared to invest in Toronto’s infrastructure. I guess you have never had to suffer the daily grid-lock of a Toronto commute.
— I’ve lived in the City of Toronto for 42 of my 45 years. I’ve seen this city grow and yes I have had to ensure the daily grid-lock of a Toronto commute. How far do you think $38 million will go to restoring our infrastructure? The streetcars alone will cost $1 billion. You must love Olivia Chow and Jack Layton. By the way, they use to live on the island. Talk about privileged.
My point is if we are going throw public money at infrastructure projects, let’s have some intelligent, future oriented public debate about priorities and commitments. A tunnel to Tornoto island for the sake of half a million passengers a year is not a good use of my taxpayer dollars. A commitment to enhanced public transit in Toronto and the Golden Triangle, on the other hand, is the kind of 100 year project that our children will thank us for.
— My taxpayer dollars already go to putting all sorts of crazy cultural buildings in places like Kitchener. I’m pretty sure Torontonians have paid more into improving Kitchener than the other way around. Your say is meaningless.
By the way, I am betting Porter Air will not even be in business in 10 years or if it is we the taxpayers will have given it a bailout. Afterall that tunnel has to lead somewhere doesn’t it! Ottawa I guess…
— Well, if Porter isn’t in business in 10 years, it won’t be from a lack of trying. Have you ever heard of Air Canada? That’s the biggest taxpayer sinkhole going. How much money, public and private has been put into propping up this terrible excuse for an airline? $10 billion. Propping up Porter is a non-issue.