Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:07 on 2023-10-18 Permalink Reply  

• Nicholas 00:02 on 2023-10-19 Permalink

  That piece is so bad. I sent it to my friend in aviation (he”s never worked in Canada in aviation but used to live here so knows the airport and airlines well) and he got so worked up he’s now having trouble falling asleep.

• Joey 08:42 on 2023-10-19 Permalink

  @Nicholas how so?

• Nicholas 13:51 on 2023-10-19 Permalink

  The columnist doesn’t seem to know much about aviation, and it sounds like he saw some trouble with traffic and got the prof’s publicist’s press release about a history book and ran with it. Kate, forgive me for this rant.

  The airport is not “landlocked, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods, with little or no space to grow”: it’s mostly surrounded by highways, rail lines and industrial, with only the neighbourhood north of Cardinal at all within expansion range. There’s space to extend the international/transborder horseshoe to the west by moving some of the catering buildings on Stuart Graham further northwest. The domestic jetty (island) used to be double the size (you can see the old gates on the satellite view) and there are options for the main domestic terminal, not counting adding more flexibility with swing gates or creating a satellite terminal where the deicing area is or the old 10/28 runway (which is now a taxiway). As for runways (which he talks about with aircraft movements), there’s space for one on top of the Dorval Golf Course parallel to the two main ones (plus some wetlands), or even just to the south of 6L/24R, or 6R/24L with some removal of some industrial along Cote de Liesse.

  The terminal being old is not a huge deal: domestic can be spruced up when redone, but international and transborder is much newer and just fine. (Also, heating and cooling airy, high-ceiling buildings is not cheap.) Lines at customs is a huge problem everywhere: YYZ, YVR, JFK, EWR, IAD, LHR, AMS, CDG…. I’ve done a lot of flying in my day, including in the last four years, and YUL is by far the best of the airports I’ve listed. (Connections are also way shorter than in YYZ, which not only has long distances to walk (not even counting changing terminals in some cases) but had worldwide newsworthy lines in 2022!)

  I haven’t read the professor’s book, but I’m not sure why a 24-hour airport is necessary? Unlike the big European airports, we don’t really have a ton of demand for flights arriving or departing at 3 am (there are only 2 flights departing and 8 arriving between 11 pm and the 1 am curfew, though to be fair I could imagine a few more flights departing before 6 am). YYZ has a 6 am curfew as well, and it’s rather common worldwide; I remember flying into YYZ at 05:59:45 and we had to max the engines and do a go around so as not to land before 6 and pay a $10,000 fine.

  As I mentioned, there is space for more runways for more flights. Also with more traffic we could increase the size of planes on many routes, as, the article notes, Heathrow has done. (Building actual high speed rail should remove demand for all those flights to Toronto and Quebec.) And the columnist notes, in consecutive paragraphs, that the airport spokesperson notes the number of movements is down by one-sixth this year alone even though the number of passengers is up (we’re upgauging planes!), while complaining that the era of larger planes has ended. Anecdotally, I have noticed larger planes this year, and fuller planes, from YUL.

  As for car traffic, we have a 2027 solution to that, but, like, drivers complaining about other drivers getting in their way never ceases to amaze me. Be the change you want to see in the world and choose a different option!

  Anyway, he ends his essay with a Nothing Can Be Done, because it’s too late to adopt his and the prof’s preferred Mirabel solution. So, great, thanks for that, wonderful column! I mean, I’m going to continue lamenting the choices made in rail transportation in this province and country for decades to come, but I don’t have a newspaper column, just blog comments run by a benevolent overload (sorry, Kate!).

• DeWolf 14:10 on 2023-10-19 Permalink

  There’s also a lot of conjecture. For instance, Yakabuski suggests that ADM could have used the $3 billion it has spent on improvements to Trudeau by maintaining Mirabel and building a rail link there instead. But the rail link would have eaten up most of that budget, and Mirabel’s terminal would have needed improvements and expansion anyway, so it probably would have cost more in the long run to keep Mirabel operating.

  Another example: “The REM’s arrival could help ease congestion if more passengers opt for public transit over taxis or their own cars. But that remains a big ‘if.’ Chances are most REM traffic will consist of existing transit users.” This is a completely baseless comment. Sure, it’s entirely possible that nobody switches from using their personal cars or taxis to the REM, but that would be an astonishing outcome. Hardly a “big if.” Just look at the success of the UP Express in Toronto, which has a far more limited route than the REM.

• Kate 17:34 on 2023-10-19 Permalink

  Nicholas, no apology necessary. In fact, I should thank you for writing such a reasoned response.

• Joey 18:21 on 2023-10-19 Permalink

  Thanks Nicholas, interesting stuff.

• Orr 18:36 on 2023-10-20 Permalink

  The need to cut fossil fuel by 50% by 2030 and 99% by 2050 will solve this problem, right?
  Ha, who am I kidding, air travel expected to grow 50% by 2030 and 100% by 205, of course IATA and ICAO say (with a straight face) that fossil fuel use for air transport will be down 50% by 2050.
  Numbers do not add up but then I’m not doing industry-lobbyist math.