The Toronto Port Authority announced recently that the controversial proposal to link the city’s downtown airport with the mainland with the construction of a $38-million pedestrian tunnel is dead in the water.

For the last year or so, Toronto officials had been tinkering with the project in order to ease access to the city’s second airport which is located on an island about two kilometers away from the financial district. Being increasingly busy, the Toronto Island Airport is under pressure to improve the experience to and from the facility. The island is currently served only with ferry shuttles.

The Toronto Port Authority had pitched the proposal as a candidate for stimulus funding from the Canadian Federal Government, which has been on a infrastructure spending spree for the past few years.

But in order to have access to stimulus funding, the Canadian government requires that all projects be completed by March 2011. The authority just felt like it was running out of time.

The decision to ditch the proposal came even if the tunnel project had received support from both federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Transport and Infrastructure Minister John Baird.

The pedestrian tunnel would have benefited Porter Airlines, the successful and increasingly popular upstart company specialising in short-haul flights, which is also the Island Airport’s primary customer.

Porter has proven very useful for passengers looking to do quick business in downtown Toronto, thus avoiding traffic and the hassle of dealing with the city’s large international facility, Pearson International Airport, Canada’s biggest and busiest.

As of yet, the carrier’s key destinations have been Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Chicago and New York City, but the airline is planning to expand service to other North American destinations. The airline is even contributing an excess of $30-million to expand the small terminal.

The tunnel plan was aggressively argued by Toronto Mayor David Miller, who wants the city to centralise its air passenger activity at Pearson International.

Subscribe for free and recieve the latest Self-Catering-Breaks news and stories
Filed under Travel News, World News

• Calypso Water Park in Ottawa
• Canadian Scientists Warn Against New H1N1 Vaccine Issue

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Travel News, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.