Four years before jets takeoff from Toronto Island Airport: analysis

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It would be four years before jets could fly off Toronto Island Airport, according to an analysis commissioned by the port authority, and an extended runway will mean blast barriers, a larger exclusion zone for boaters and the possibility of dozens more flights each day.

The controversial push to expand the airport and allow jets was the focus of an open house Tuesday night, where an extensive report from engineering consultants WSP Canada was made public.

"We're happy with the progress here – that we're starting to answer some of the difficult questions that are being asked," said Gene Cabral, executive vice-president of Ports Toronto, which operates the airport.

Some of the answers – including the fact it would be necessary to move the buoys that keep boats away by as much as 25 metres – were quick to prompt criticism.

"The truth will start to trickle out – this is why time is our ally," said NoJetsTO chair Norman Di Pasquale. "Clearly we're starting to see some of the realities of expanding the airport and how it's going to wreck our waterfront."

Among the conclusions of the WSP report – which is part of the preliminary runway design work and will inform the project's environmental assessment – is that the number of daily commercial flights could grow to 242 from the current maximum of 202, if there was demand, within the current noise restrictions. And WSP Canada director of aviation James Lindsey said the pace of approvals and construction makes it unlikely that jets would fly before 2019.

Neither of these conclusions was endorsed by Mr. Cabral. He said the port authority was sticking to its position that there was no need to increase the number of flights beyond 202 per day. In a cautious vote last year supporting more study of the expansion plans, city council put a hard cap of 202 on the airport.

Mr. Cabral also argued it would be "premature to predict" how long it would take to secure political approval and extend the runway.

However, Mr. Lindsey said construction, approvals and design work will push the projected completion date years into the future.

"Once you start adding up all these times and start to put some fairly conservative numbers to them, 2019 seems like a reasonable estimate to start operations on an extended runway," he said.

Only one year ago Porter Airlines founder Robert Deluce was confident he would be able to fly jets off the island by 2016.

Porter spokesman Brad Cicero said there was "probably a lot of play" in the latest projected timeline. "Our more optimistic view would be that it can be sooner than that."

The WSP report offers a great amount of detail on issues that have been hotly debated.

It confirmed that jet blast deflectors would be needed at each end of the runway. Mr. Lindsey suggested they would be about three metres high and somewhat wider than the runway, which is 45 metres wide.

Another question has surrounded the so-called marine exclusion zone (MEZ), an expanse of water ringed by buoys to keep boaters away from airport operations. According to the WSP analysis, the MEZ would not have to extend farther to the east or west but would have to bulge at each end. Both the southwest and southeast boundaries of the MEZ would move between 13 and 25 metres out. The northwest boundary, on the approach to the western shipping channel, would have to move out an average of 10 metres.

In its vote last year, city council stipulated that there could be no changes to the MEZ that would "materially encroach" on the channel.

"From a marine traffic standpoint, in that specific area, boaters are not likely to notice much of an impact," Mr. Lindsey said. "However, that's going to be assessed in detail as part of the environmental assessment. So they're doing a detailed marine traffic study to determine what the actual impact will be."