Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is up for some major physical changes in the coming months in order to adhere to new federal requirements, ones that not everyone is in support of, but that need to be made for it to continue operation.
The island facility will soon have to install new Runway End Safety Areas (RESAs), which are required as per the latest update to the Canadian Aviation Regulations that went into effect at the end of 2021. And, there are now some renderings available of what these new features will look like.
All airstrips that service more than 325,000 per year must have RESAs in place beyond their already regulated runway safety areas by 2027 to mitigate potential damage in cases where pilots overshoot or veer off the runway during takeoff and landing.
PortsToronto, which runs Billy Bishop, presented three options for the RESA designs, varying in cost and complexity — one even included a pedestrian pathway around the property. The City ended up approving the most straightforward, inexpensive version last month to comply with the regulations as quickly as possible.
In the latest edition of his City Hall Watcher newsletter, municipal politics expert Matt Elliot touched on the lobbying efforts being made on behalf of the airport — which have included a whopping 127 communications logged with the City in total — and shared the most recent RESA mock-ups sourced from a presentation from PortsToronto.
Rendering of RESA option 1, as selected by council, as viewed towards the south. Image from PortsToronto via City Hall Watcher.
The selected design requires the smallest increase to the island’s landmass out of all the proposals, with a 145-metre-wide, 7,850-square-metre expansion 54 metres out from the seawall on the runway’s west end and a 135-metre-wide, 6,100-square-metre expansion the same distance out from its east end.
By comparison, other options could have added up to 45,500 square metres of land and included the addition of breakwaters, sound barriers and airside roads.
Rendering of RESA option 1, as selected by council, as viewed towards the east. Image from PortsToronto via City Hall Watcher.
At first, stakeholders claimed that the RESAs would present enough of a financial burden to threaten the future of the hub unless PortsToronto’s lease on the land was extended, making it more able to get outside funding.
But, some people have contended that the firm has more than enough cash to pay for the builds after the sale of various properties over the years, even without the security of a lease extension.
Rendering of RESA option 1, as selected by council, as viewed towards the west. Image from PortsToronto via City Hall Watcher.
Either way, city council greenlit the necessary landmass additions for the RESAs in a meeting on October 9, and also provided its commitment to renegotiating the Tripartite Agreement that governs the site to permit a longer-term lease and “ensure ongoing and future operations” at the airport, if conditions are met.
The extension of the lease, which currently expires in 2033, would be until December 31, 2045 at most — 28 years less than the 40-year term that PortsToronto was hoping, and apparently still lobbying, for.
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