When you claim that environmental equity will do nothing for the 8000 kids in Malton, mostly working class and mostly children of colour, try to keep the exultation out of your voice. I mean, I know the situation compels you to root for environmental privilege and against environmental equity, but still, you could manage a little restraint.

In any case, Toronto City Centre Airport can accommodate 120 regional takeoffs and landings a day. At that rate, the pollution emitted would equal that put out by about a hundred meters of the Gardiner Expressway, and the planes would still make far less noise than the Queen's Quay streetcar. That would also cut the noise spikes at Malton and Rexdale by 10% (regional flights tend to use smaller aircraft), a significant number. In order to allow a 10% better chance for kids in Malton and Rexdale to get an education, to say nothing of the 3000 flights per year carrying patient transfers, blood and organs, which Toronto City Centre Airport accommodates, I can manage to do my cycling on the other 80km of Toronto waterfront. I can leave 2.5 km (of, incidentally, arsenic-riddled inner harbour dredgings) for the kids of Rexdale, Malton, and Sick Kids.

Finally, in case you haven't noticed, Miller's never put a motion before council asking to have the airport closed. He's never even put forth a motion asking to have commercial flights cancelled. If he can't do that (because he quite probably couldn't get it through council), do you really think he could get through a motion to close Bathurst Street? Time to face the facts: opposition to Toronto City Centre Airport has never attracted the votes of a majority of Toronto voters. The poll on the issue airport opponents quote estimates that 53% of the people oppose the airport (or the idea of a bridge to it); other polls estimate that a majority favours the airport. This current "uproar" seems to concern only some residents of the central waterfront, a few journalists, and a handful of people who write on web-logs.

I predict that sometime in October, the first Porter flights will lift off. Some folks will cheer. Some (including some of the most privileged and pampered people on the planet) will grind their teeth. Most will listen for the flights, and find the roar from Community AIR and the mayor drowns them out completely. Come December, we'll wonder why anyone made a fuss.

By  John Spragge, at 1:36 PM  

John,

Might I ask if your profile picture is a shot of you in front of your plane? If so, might I ask where said plane flies from? It wouldn't be City Centre Airport now, would it? :)

It's not about 10 flights a day (or 20 or 100), it's about the thin edge of the wedge. Is the waterfront going to trend towards change, progress, and living? Or will it be about more noise, more crud and more barriers? And 'Environmental Equity'?? You've got to be kidding! If folks are serious about environmental equity, then I'd tell all the commuters from Milton and Georgetown that pollute MY downtown to shove the tailpipes of their SUV's up their butts and stop filling MY childrens lungs with crap!


-a

By  Anonymous, at 12:04 PM  

My profile picture shows me after my first solo. I didn't solo at Toronto City Centre Airport. But I do love the place, and I've never pretended otherwise. I love Green River and Whitevale, too, the bucolic little towns that the GTAA wants to ruin by building the Pickering Airport (that project will inevitably go ahead if we close TCCA.

You used the word "trend", but given the history of waterfront development recently, I think you mean excuse. We have 80km of waterfront in this city. Giving up 2km to environmental equity (not to mention the medical transport system that serves Sick Kids and Princess Margaret) didn't ruin that in the past, and it won't today. Face it, we will never have a "perfect" waterfront. Ever. The federal surplus could not pay enough to get the last scrap of heavy metals out of the soil, the last inch of the Gardiner torn down, the last potted plant thriving. We either go with what we have, and balance the absolutely legitimate competing demands (including environmental equity), or we might as well scrap the whole project and save ourselves some money right now. I see the airport as a place of wonder and beauty, a road into the sky, a school and medical facility, a place touched with the wonder of everyone who has walked the sky roads. You don't have to see it like that, but as long as you see it as a giant excuse for this city to fail at waterfront development, you won't get what you want either.

As for the line that rich people driving $50,000 SUVs into town gives you the right to dump pollution on poor kids in Malton: sorry, the world doesn't work like that.

By  John Spragge, at 1:18 PM