January 30, 2007
Goodbye Terminal 2, Hello Pier F
At 9:30 PM last night, Pearson Airport's drab but functional Terminal 2 saw its final departure take off for the United States. In April the process of tearing down the building will begin, first with its concrete crushed to be used as the sub-base for a strip of new tarmac. The closing of Terminal 2 and it's Mayan temple-like parking garage marks the end of Pearson Airport's lengthy and expensive Airport Development Plan (or ADP). At 4.5 billion dollars, it is the single most expensive project in Canada's history and is largely to blame for Toronto's dubious honour of having the highest airport landing fee in the world. The airport has already recently seen the demolition of the old Terminal 1, the construction of its big and fancy successor, and the installation of the LINK Interterminal Shuttle connecting Terminals 1 and 3.
Of the $4.5 billion, $800 million was used for the construction of the new Pier F at Terminal 1, which will open to the public today for the first time. Pier F will become the new home for flights previously using Terminal 2 until today, and two of its twenty-five gates have been designed to accommodate the upcoming Airbus A380 super jumbo jet. Among its many bells and whistles is the world's fastest moving walkway and the enormous $1.5 million steel sculpture "Tilted Spheres" by American sculptor Richard Serra.
If you were to ask someone to name the most impressive feature of the old Terminal 2 building, most people would be left scratching their heads or they might point to the parking garage. Originally designed as a cargo terminal, the building really had little to admire. Still the place holds certain sentimental attachments for many people who worked there, or first stepped foot in Canada on that spot. This past Sunday a wake of sorts was held at the airport, and anyone who cared was permitted to walk its long harshly lit hallways one last time. For those of you who are kicking yourselves now for missing it, Spacing has a nice tribute to Terminal 2 in its twilight hours here. It is still unclear if Terminal 3 will now be renamed Terminal 2, or if first time visitors to the Megacity will be left wondering why there is a Terminal 3 if there isn't a 2.
With this enormous infrastructure investment, The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) hopes to transform Pearson into a major hub, giving international travelers a place to change planes without having to endure the post 9/11 security hassles down south. Should the much talked about fixed rail link to the city ever be built, then Torontonians will no longer have to be ashamed of our inferior airport facilities. Perhaps Toronto will never be a world-class city, but at least we've finally got a world-class airport.
Related: Torontoist Remembers Aeroquay One
Photos by neuroticjose on Flickr.
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While the Airport Development Plan (ADP) in its originally publish form is nearing completion, there is a lot left to go.
If you wander over to GTAA's website and take a look at their master plan, you'll notice a diagram showing only one terminal at Pearson in the long run. As they put it: "once Terminal 3 has reached the end of its operational life", it will be torn down, and Terminal 1 will be extended with two more piers overtop where Terminal 3 is now.
Currently Terminal 1 has Piers D,E,F (A,B,C are in Terminal 3). Piers G & H will be developed on top of what is currently Terminal 2.
It looks like there is a lot of development left yet. They are working towards a capacity of 50-55 million passengers a year, and currently with the opening of Pier F have a capacity of 38 million. There will be plenty of development to keep Pearson's costs high.
So perhaps the missing "Terminal 2" will reamin that way until Terminal 3 expires and Pearson only has one "Mega Terminal".
While the new pier is pretty and all, the users of the airport will be paying for it for decades. The GTAA has borrowed $6.6 Billion for the entire development and annually pays $410 million to service this debt. On top of this, the airport authority loses money on an annual basis - $180 Million in 2005.
So while they boast this was completed without government funding, passengers and airlines will be paying for it through airport improvement fees and higher landing fees.
Regardless of the dispute over rent with the Federal Government, I doubt this will make Pearson a North American hub simply due to the costs.
I'm sure the highest airport landing fee in the world will soon get pricier.
It's an interesting bit of spin labelling today's opening the "completion" of the ADP, when in fact they still have to complete the expansion of the East Processor in T3 before they actually will be at the point they originally planned to be in 2005, that may take as long as two more years.
I wouldn't put too many bets on later phases of the master plan going forward any time soon, they are out of cash so they would need to do another bond issue to raise the money and they need a meglomaniac like Lou Turpen to bully the board into it, as long as they keep losing money it seems unlikely they will have the stones to try and spend yet more. Current capacity of T1 and T3 is 36 Million passengers a year, actual traffic in 2005 was 28 Million (2006 hasn't been reported yet). If you look at the traffic projections in the 1999 master plan they called for pier G to be built in 2007, GTAA's own revised projections have it being needed in 2010, realistically my thinking is more like 2014. If in the next decade there is an oil crisis or the US economy tanks then what we have today is all the airport we'll need for 20 years.
Check out the annotated graph from the GTAA's master plan that I've added to the flickr group.
Where is the pollution from those extra millions of planes going to go? On us, I guess.
I get the pleasure of flying out of terminal 1 to laguardia in a couple weeks, although it has more shops and food than terminal 2, i can't help but feel like i'm in a mini yorkville.
Where is the pollution from those extra millions of planes going to go? On us, I guess.
You do realise that about 47% of the trips on commercial aircraft are for pleasure (vacation, visit family) and about 43% are for business, right? And 72% of commercial air trips are for traversing distances of 1000 miles or more, round trip, with a median distance of about 1,732 miles.
You could probably persuade a lot of businesses to stay put and use videoconferencing rather than jet people from city to city. That's a relatively easy sell.
The hard part is convincing average Joes of all ages that they should have a long annoying road/train trip to their destination, rather than a shorter (but still annoying) flight. Or would the emissions footprint of all those separate road/train trips start outweighing that of the flights. Hmmmm.
It's probably safe to say that you won't have a much easier time trying to convince people that they don't actually need to go on vacation, too. Or that they should just vacation within 1000 miles of home and not drive or fly too much.
Good luck with all that.