page_title: Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport
section_title: Pedestrian tunnel
hierarchical_section_title: Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport / History / Pedestrian tunnel
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of tunnel connecting Billy Bishop to the mainland
context_page_description: Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is a regional airport located on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The airport is often referred to as Toronto Island Airport and was previously known as Port George VI Island Airport and Toronto City Centre Airport. The airport's name honours Billy Bishop, the Canadian World War I flying ace and World War II Air Marshal. It is used by civil aviation, air ambulances, and regional airlines using turboprop planes. In 2018, it was ranked Canada's ninth-busiest airport, and the sixth-busiest Canadian airport that serves the U.S.
  Conceived in the 1930s as the main airport for Toronto, the construction of the airport was completed in 1939 by the Toronto Harbour Commission. At the same time, the THC built Malton Airport as an alternate, but nearby Malton became Toronto's main passenger airline hub instead, leaving the island airport for general aviation and military purposes. During the 1940s and 1950s, several political leaders proposed an expansion of the island airport to enable scheduled passenger airlines and reduce the annual operating costs.
context_section_description: A tunnel was first proposed to connect to the island airport in 1935. A tunnel was started, but cancelled and filled in. Since 1938, a car ferry has provided service to and from the airport.
  In 1997, Toronto City Council approved a bridge to connect to the island airport. In 2003, Council cancelled the bridge after Toronto Mayor David Miller was elected on a platform to cancel the bridge. The Port Authority bought two new car ferries instead.
  In 2009, the Toronto Port Authority (TPA), operator of the airport, first proposed to build a pedestrian tunnel connecting the airport with the mainland, at a cost of $38 million. The TPA proposed that the project be paid for primarily through federal and provincial economic stimulus funds. Critics such as federal MP Olivia Chow and Toronto City Councillor Adam Vaughan criticized the proposal as benefiting only a small number of privileged users, as well as being a subsidy to Porter Airlines' business. The project was not included on a City-approved list of projects submitted to the Government of Canada. In October 2009, the TPA, having not yet received approval for the tunnel project, announced that it was now too late to proceed if the project was to meet the March 2011 completion date condition for receiving federal infrastructure stimulus funds and withdrew the project.
  In January 2010, the TPA announced that it was seeking a private-sector partner to build a pedestrian tunnel. The cost was now estimated at $45 million. This was to be financed through a $5/flight increase in the Airport Fee paid by passengers. On July 12, 2010, the TPA announced that it intended to begin construction of the tunnel as early as 2011, after conduction an environmental assessment. The tunnel would not be built on or over City of Toronto land, meaning City approval would not required. The TPA also announced that an opinion poll conducted on behalf of the TPA suggested that "a majority (56%) of Torontonians support a pedestrian tunnel to the island airport."
  The TPA conducted a private environmental assessment of the project and decided to proceed in April 2011. The TPA then short-listed three companies to respond to a request for proposals to build the tunnel. The RFP ended in October 2011. In July 2011, an agreement was reached with the City of Toronto, exchanging lands with the Port Authority, enabling the Port Authority to proceed on the pedestrian tunnel. The agreement allows the Port Authority to expand their taxi and parking space for the airport. In exchange, the City of Toronto had a water main to serve the Islands included as part of the project. In January 2012, the TPA announced that ground-breaking would take place in February 2012, with construction to take approximately two years.
  Ground-breaking began in March 2012. Initially, the tunnel was estimated at $38 million, but this was revised to a cost of $82.5 million. It was expected to take 25 months to complete but eventually took 40 to complete. Tunnelling contractor Technicore Underground, Inc. had to deal with left over metal pilings from the 1930s tunnel project and contaminated soil. The pilings themselves were not a surprise, their details being in the TPA archives, but the pilings had fractured much of the rock in the tunnel area, meaning that the strength of the rock around the tunnel area was weaker and needed extra shoring up. There was also a dispute over payments and Technicore filed a $10 million lien against the project alleging unpaid work. To deal with the delays, the contractor applied for an exemption from the city's noise bylaw to work around the clock. Its application for round-the-clock work was denied, but it was allowed to work longer hours until 11 p.m. The Toronto Port Authority announced that the project would be complete during the winter of 2014/2015 and blamed the delay on the winter of 2013/2014 being colder than in previous years and ice build-up slowed progress. The agency announced a further delay to the late spring of 2015. The project finally opened on July 30, 2015.
caption: The tunnel connecting Billy Bishop to the mainland
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