There was an election where one of the biggest topics was the island airport. Miller and Vaughan were elected and were openly against the airport.
The public just wanted someone different from Lastman. I bet if we had political parties at the municipal level, Miller's NDP platform would have fallen flat on its face.
As to Vaughan's election....NIMBY reaction from that riding....
The bridge is off the table, Porter was paid compensation, and the Airport Authority accepted a legal settlement of $35 million that says they can't consider building a bridge anymore.
If the airport is not such an issue, why not allow the bridge? Let the airport authority pay for it. From an environmental perspective, its a lot better than running that ferry.....
There isn't any real talk of closing the airport right now. It will not be an election issue. Why talk about it?
Because it'll likely become an issue again next election...seems to pop up randomly when certain politicians don't want to talk about the many other issues we have in this city....
It isn't closing, the city has no power to close it, the city isn't talking about closing it.
Thank goodness, the feds had the sense not to hand over the airport. Otherwise, it would be closed. That's why we are talking about it, because there are still many people who can't wait for Porter and the airport to fail.
If the airport ever closes it will be because Porter no longer flies there.
And then hopefully, some other upstart will come along. As long as traffic can be generated the airport should be open, Porter or no Porter.
Having a referendum at this point would be pointless... like a referendum on whether to locate Mississauga City Centre at Cooksville or the 403...
Critics don't shut up just because of a vote.
But they might stop claiming that most of the public is behind them and the mayor will certainly understand that getting elected on a whole platform does not automatically mean that your single issue is accepted or priority 1 for the public.
Critics of the airport believe that the airport is unnecessary and not a good fit with residential, office, and park zoning.
Fair enough. But they should be equally honest in saying that they want that air traffic relocated to impact other residents in the city.
It is not a co-incidence that at locations around the world airports are surrounded by lower cost land and industrial use.
Yet, this is not the case for YTZ. Indeed the airport is not holding back the waterfront condo boom.
The fact that land values on the waterfront are not severely impacted by the airport says more about the effectiveness of jet aircraft and expansion restrictions and the draw of downtown than it says about the desirability of an airport in an urban environment.
You are providing weak justification here for what you know is contradictory evidence. YTZ has had no impact on waterfront property values. It has not impacted any of the recreational or tourist activities downtown. And it is increasingly proving to be a better option than Pearson. The island airport is convenient and environmentally friendly and the majority of its operations aren't over residents anyway (they are over water), a polar opposite of Pearson. If as you believe that all this says more about the effectiveness of turboprops and the expansion restrictions than I trust that you should be able to agree that the rules are effective and that the airport deserves to stay as long as it follows the rules. WRT the desirability of the airport....find me a neighbourhood that wants to take on an airport. If you want access to air travel it has to be convenient and it will impact someone. The downtown is not special in this regard. As long as downtowners want to fly they should bare some burden of the noise and pollution that comes from having an airport nearby.
