September 29th, 2006
JOHN LORINC COLUMN: Is Miller tilting at turboprops?
Posted by John Lorinc
Is Miller tilting at turboprops?
In the wake of the revelations this week about the $20 million start-up subsidy for Robert Deluce’s Porter Air, Community Air research coordinator Marc Brien laid out three scenarios for blocking the increasingly imminent launch of this new service.
Here they are, in order. One, Stephen Harper’s government, responding to public outrage about the sweet-heart deal between the Martin Liberals and the Toronto Port Authority (TPA), could force Deluce to fly out of Pearson. Second, the city could make getting to that Bathurst Street terminal really irritating, with a combination of “aggressive” traffic calming measures, ticketing and new restrictions on the permitted use of the city-owned land the TPA wants for queue lanes. Three, the city could seek an injunction in court against the port authority because the Q400 may be in violation of safety conditions in the Tripartite Agreement.
David Miller says the $20 million deal is “outrageous” and hopes it will motivate Transport minister Lawrence Cannon to download the port authority to the city after Roger Tasse releases his review next month. “I would think Stephen Harper understands that completely,” he said after a speech Friday at the Board of Trade.
Really? Quite apart from the Liberals’ double-dealing on the airport file, there’s little mystery to why official Ottawa wants the TPA to remain solvent and Porter to fly. If the feds shutter one money-losing port authority, they may have to do the same with some of the others in a similar position. As for the airline, let’s remember that Industry Canada in 1996 invested $57 million in the development of the Q400, and it wants to see a return on that investment. On a more partisan note, it’s really tough to imagine that a business-friendly, environmentally challenged government would do anything to obstruct Deluce who, after all, has long-standing Tory ties. So much for tactic one.
Then what about the nuisance tactics and the injunction? Deluce has been very public about his latest plans since January, what with the terminal construction, the branding campaign and the delivery of the new planes. Yet despite all that activity, the city hasn’t done a thing to throw up the obstacles Brien describes. Last I checked, there’s are no new speed bumps or turn restrictions down there, nor a change in the city’s lease with the port authority on the use of that land at the foot of Bathurst. As for the injunction, Community Air has been warning about the runway safety issues for years, but is the city gearing up to take the TPA to court now that Porter’s launch is around the corner and there are Q400s now landing down there? Not that I know of.
Which begs the question: What is Miller waiting for? And where’s all the tough talk from 2003, when he was quite specific about what needed to be done to stop the bridge?
When I asked the mayor to comment on Community Air’s proposed tactics, he said the city is “limited” in what it can do and reiterated he is “hopeful” that Cannon will dismantle the port authority for violating its mandate.
And if Cannon doesn’t, what then? “I’m not going to speculate on ifs,” Miller replied.
Why not? And where’s Plan B? Maybe the mayor’s playing his legal cards close to the vest. But I doubt it. The mayor is acutely aware of the fact that he’s got to sweet talk a Toronto-phobic, election-minded government into renewing housing, environment and transit programs worth millions of dollars. If he decides at this late stage to wage hand-to-hand legal combat with the port authority and Deluce, will he imperil his tenuous relations with the Harperites? I’d say the answer is yes and he knows it.
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Comments
As I’ve written elsewhere, the Community AIR has a much weaker position (politically, morally, and factually) than they pretend, or that many of their supporters think. The Feds understand that if the city (and especially the outlying parts, where Harper’s conservatives think they might win seats) really opposed Toronto City Centre Airport, David Miller would have a clutch of anti-airport resolutions from City Council in his pocket. If he doesn’t have those resolutions, we can assume he can’t get them. And if he can’t get them, that makes his position weak.
This raises the question: will Community AIR and their supporters accept that they have lost this round, and look for a compromise? Or will they persist in making their maximum demands (closure of the airport and nothing else), thus underlining for the voters what Mayor Miller cannot deliver?
Comment by John Spragge
October 1, 2006 @ 1:45 pm
Speed bumps and turn restrictions… what else, abolish the streetcar stop too?
Comment by Mark Dowling
October 1, 2006 @ 4:10 pm
My comment to the initial Lorinc column was directed at John’s claim that there was nothing Miller/the City could do to stop Island Airport expansion. In fact there is plenty the City can do, as I hope I demonstrated.
Whether Miller WILL do anything remains to be seen. However, the Port Authority expansion plan (as per the Sypher:Mueller consulting report) calls for 35,000 turboprop landings/takeoffs per year, versus the slightly more than 2,000 by Jazz in 2005.
Assuming an average load of 50% of the Q400’s capacity, that would put some 1.2-million passengers through central waterfront neighbourhoods annually, versus the roughly 25,000 passengers that Jazz was carrying annually in later years.
Any notion that this level of activity, with its attendant pollution and safety risk, won’t seriously impact waterfront rejuvenation is silly on its face.
So if the mayor wants to keep promoting and investing in waterfront rejuvenation as a key to improving the City, he must be prepared to use City powers to put roadblocks in the way of airport expansion assuming that Ottawa refuses to do the right thing. I don’t believe the community will let Miller get away with promoting the fiction that there is nothing the City is able to do.
Beyond that, the community cannot afford to let the airport expansion monster proceed as planned, with or without the help of our political representatives. As with the City, there are a number of options open to the citizenry to put roadblocks in the way of airport expansion and these are actively being worked up.
At the end of the day, the Achilles’ heel of the Port Authority expansion scheme is that they must bring their passengers through the narrow streets of our neighbourhood.
Marc Brien
Research Coordinator
CommunityAIR
Comment by Marc Brien
October 2, 2006 @ 12:29 pm
Marc Brien pretty much confirmed my points, more clearly than I could have expected. David Miller’s waterfront supporters plan to hold his feet to the fire, even at the risk of making him look ineffective at a critical time. I got one thing wrong: Mr. Brien’s comments don’t so much betray an over-estimation of the support his position enjoys in the rest of the city, as an apparent unwillingness to understand how the city works. The city as a whole does not answer to the neighbourhood he lives in, or the neighbourhood I live in, for that matter. Mr. Brien and his friends in Community AIR obviously believe the rest of us ought to support his position, but the city won’t act unless we do support his position. It appears pretty clear that the city hasn’t acted at least partly because most Torontonians do not object, or at least do not object strongly, to Mr. Deluce’s plans. Community AIR will do their position no good by punishing David Miller for that fact.
As people who have read what I have to say in the past know, the emergence of a circular firing squad among the opponents of the airport doesn’t upset me. I do find it an interesting example of the law of unintended consequences in politics.
Comment by John Spragge
October 3, 2006 @ 1:08 pm
John^
I have never seen a poll suggesting the rest of the city supports turning the island airport, a sleepy airport at that, into a heavily trafficed commuter airport.
Though I did see over 375,000 people support Mayor Miller last election when he fought to keep the airport from becoming a major hub.
Until I see those numbers all of your talk about “fair” sahre of air traffic is hogwash.
Comment by Glo
October 3, 2006 @ 1:17 pm
I am really looking forward to the expanded airline service at the island airport. I travel to Ottawa frequently.
It is really unfortunate that a lot of squatters on the island who have no business being there have come to have so much influence on the affairs of the city.
I really hope in a few years time the TPA is able to extend the runways at the airport to support larger planes.
Comment by Trevor
October 3, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
The Island Airport expansionists have had to conjure up a lot of arguments over the years to justify pouring millions in taxpayer subsidies into expanding this failed airport in a park. (The $20-million the feds gave to Deluce to start Porter just scratches the surface of the handouts.)
However, John Spragge’s “democracy of pollution” notion may just be the goofiest of all.
Here’s a fun exercise everyone can do at home.
Imagine a few tons of the noxious chemicals that are produced from the combustion of aviation fuel — the five star carcinogens like 1,3-butadiene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, benzene, styrene, or any other of the more than forty other poisonous compounds that have been identified by the US Environmental Protection Agency and other government bodies.
Now draw a circle with a five mile radius around each of Pearson International and the Toronto Island Airport. Do an estimate of how many residents and workers will be exposed to the cancer causing, asthma inducing, heart atttack recurring effects of those chemicals.
Then decide whether shifting that pollution from Pearson International to the Island Airport as an exercise in democracy makes sense to you.
Or better still, you could just take the train and not have to think about airport-induced pollution at all. In fact, from the standpoint of the environment and human health, it would even be preferable to drive a Hummer to your destination than to fly.
Marc Brien
Research Coordinator
CommunityAIR
Comment by Marc Brien
October 5, 2006 @ 7:45 am
If we draw a circle exactly five miles around the centre of each airport, the circle around Pearson cuts into Malton and north Etobicoke, while the circle around Toronto City Centre, while mostly covering water, extends north well into the city. But drawing circles amounts to a game of let’s pretend.
Let’s look at the environmental impact of dispatching a passenger from Pearson versus Toronto City Centre. According to data from a study for the US EPA, shorter taxiways mean that Porter turboprops will emit only about 65% of the organic pollutants they would emit if they left from Pearson. At the very highest volume of traffic they hope for, Porter plans to dispatch sixty flights a day from Toronto City Centre Airport, compared to 2,100 from Pearson. That makes the five-mile circle arbitrary and misleading.
Airplanes also produce varying levels of noise. According to a Toronto City report, 150,000 people live within the Noise Exposure Forecast NEF-25 contour for Pearson International Airport. The same contour for Toronto City Centre Airport falls over the harbour; no people live within the contour. Noise does not merely cause annoyance: it has links to stress-caused ailments, and studies have shown that it harms children in school. If Porter succeeds, the children of Malton could have a five percent greater chance to succeed in school, at the cost of virtually no increase in the noise on the waterfront. You can find details on noise issues at City Centre and Pearson here.
When we dispense with arbitrary circles, and compare the pollution impacts, we come back to the exercise in democracy (Community AIR finally has the real stakes figured out). In order to appease the desire for “excellence” of an elite neighbourhood, will we dump noise and pollution on Malton, a neighbourhood with an average family income almost exactly half of the waterfront neighbourhoods, and one which already absorbs far more than its fair share of environmental burdens?
This brings us to the alternatives. After politicians they support endorsed Toronto’s bid for Expo 2015, which TEDCO estimates will generate an aircraft movement every 2 minutes, sixteen hours a day, for four months, Community AIR wants to promote trains. What have they done? They claim one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Canada as their supporters; have they raised funds for a feasibility study on improved railways? What exactly have they done to promote passenger rail to destinations other than Pearson Airport?
Just to finish: take a look at the claim that airplanes pollute more than hummers. About.com gives the fuel efficiency of an H2 Hummer at 9.6 miles per gallon. The Q-400 turboprop gets the equivalent of 48 miles to a gallon of gas. So even if you car-pool your Hummer and fill four seats, the Q-400 flight will do less damage to the planet than the H2. In fact, the Q-400 beats all but the most ferociously fuel-efficient cars.
Comment by John Spragge
October 7, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
The pollution argument has to be the weakest thing I have heard against the airport to date. The Community AIR people are now grasping at straws.
Why not mention how much polution is generated by the cars, buses that would make the trip to Pearson instead of being able to fly out of a city centred airport?
Or does that fact not champion your misguided cause?
Blatant fearmongerring tactics won’t work this time around.
Comment by Ethan Clarke
October 18, 2006 @ 7:53 am