By Sarah B. Hood | April 11, 2016 Estimated reading time 8 minutes, 2 seconds.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority predicts air travel and shipping demand will start to surpass capacity at Toronto Pearson International Airport in 2032. Eric Dumigan Photo
Are you ready for 2032? If not, maybe you should be thinking about it. That’s the year when both the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) predict air travel and shipping demands will start to surpass their respective airports’ capacity.
On Feb. 29, the Toronto Region Board of Trade gathered more than 250 experts and stakeholders to consider the issue at its second annual aviation summit: Airports as Economic Hubs.
Two industry panels considered questions brought up in Toronto Pearson: Growth, Connectivity, Capacity, a September 2015 report prepared for the GTAA by Toronto-based planning and urban design firm Urban Strategies, Inc., such as how regional governments and airports can collaborate more effectively, and what types of new ground transportation connections will be needed over the next 15 years.
At the summit, the GTAA released a second report by Urban Strategies Inc., titled Pearson Connects: A Multi-Modal Platform for Prosperity. It finds that significant growth in Southern Ontario and the mega-employment zone around Toronto Pearson are creating an urgent need for new ground transportation connections to combat increasing traffic congestion in the region.
“We are changing so much,” GTAA president and CEO Howard Eng told Skies. “We have staff who tell me they’re living downtown and they don’t have a car, so obviously what people desire and want may be changing. That’s why I think we need a rethink. A prerequisite with us is to get the right connectivity between airports.”
With so much activity and employment at Toronto Pearson, some thinkers suggest it should be reimagined in a broader context as a sort of Union Station West. “There is opportunity to look at the land around there and try and intensify it,” said Eng, “but you need all levels of government to get together.”
The first panel of the morning, “Fuelling Ontario’s Economy: the Vital Role of Regional Airports,” brought together representatives of five airports serving the GTA: Trent Gervais, airport manager at Peterborough Airport; Frank Scremin, president and CEO of Hamilton’s John C. Munro International Airport; Michael Seabrook, president and CEO of London International Airport; Geoffrey Wilson, CEO of Ports Toronto (which manages Billy Bishop Airport); and Chris Wood, airport general manager for the Region of Waterloo.
They discussed the pros and cons of their own facilities increasing ground transportation capacity to Toronto Pearson. While the smaller regional airports stand to gain overflow traffic as Pearson’s facilities become more crowded, everyone benefits from smooth transportation links across the entire system.
“People think I’m crazy to advocate for high-speed rail to Pearson, but traffic flows both ways,” said Wood.
All agreed that regional co-ordination is key. “The last thing we want is every regional airport in southern Ontario going out and spending millions of dollars on infrastructure,” Scremin said.
The second panel, “Air to Ground and Beyond: Connecting Airports with Regional Transportation,” included Howard Eng with Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie; Peter Milczyn, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure; Leslie Woo, chief planning officer for Metrolinx; and Fitti Lourenco, Air Canada’s director of government affairs – Federal Government and Ontario.
The Pearson Connects report points out that most major world airports (London’s Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Amsterdam’s Schiphol, Hong Kong International and others) have at least two of an airport express train, a metro/rapid transit link or a regional/national train. Pearson only has one of these, in the form of UP Express, which of course only opened last year.
Panelists discussed the need for more connections, noting several transit projects currently proposed or underway, such as the Finch West LRT, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Renforth Gateway (Mississauga’s planned GO Transit bus station at Eglinton Avenue and Renforth Drive) and the SmartTrack regional express rail line.
“We are committed to building public transit,” said Crombie. However, she added, “This is a long term question, and politicians tend to think in four-year election cycles. It has to go on the policy agenda of every level of government.”
Milczyn discussed the Pearson Eco-Business Zone, which helps Pearson and its surrounding businesses make themselves greener. “It’s a great initiative,” he said, but the fact that only eight per cent of people travelling to Pearson arrive by public transit “is the biggest failure.”
The UP Express transit link opened last year. UP Express Photo
Even small behaviour-changing steps can help, Milczyn noted: “At the TTC, they did a very simple thing a few years ago: they put luggage racks on the TTC Rocket.”
Woo pointed out that technology is changing fundamental ideas about how air transportation works. “In all our building of infrastructure, we’re making sure we future-proof our expansion,” she said.
At the end of the day, said Eng, “We have just started this whole conversation about how we as airports can supply the needs of the next 25 to 30 years.”
Data and the travel experience
The summit’s keynote speaker, Susan Baer, said technology is progressing rapidly, “much faster than the aviation industry can come up with uses for it.”
Baer is currently global aviation planning lead at Arup, an independent global design, planning and engineering firm. She is also the former aviation director for the five Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) airports: John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International, LaGuardia, Teterboro and Stewart International.
Arup’s research shows how the aviation experience is changing: integrating existing data will allow for seamless intelligent connectivity that can “hyper-personalize” every passenger’s trip.
The current check-in process could be streamlined through biometrics-preapproved clearance and risk-based screening, “which is already happening in certain parts of the world.” Luggage will be tracked independently, so passengers won’t be “tethered to it.” Smaller, more energy-efficient security areas will offer more space for other amenities.
“It’s really a whole new world out there with data,” Baer concluded.
