Projections for growth at Hamilton’s airport are “highly questionable” and can’t provide a reasonable basis for the aerotropolis plans says a witness at the Ontario Municipal Board hearings opening next week. And while the president of the private operator of the airport disagrees, a witness for the city says the airport is actually not the reason for planned location of a massive industrial zone all around it.
The challenge to the airport forecasts comes from author and consultant Richard Gilbert who is representing two citizen groups opposed to the aerotropolis. He previously prepared a city-commissioned report on the implications of peak oil for Hamilton’s future.
Gilbert reviews the “Airport Market Analysis and Land Needs Study” used to justify the aerotropolis that projects 9.4 million passengers a year by 2030, and which a city report says “serves as a guideline for allocating additional land to airport use within the AEGD” (airport employment growth district – now the preferred city terminology for the aerotropolis). He points out that the airport master plan prepared in 2011 calls for less than 1.5 million passengers by 2027 and even its 2004 plans only anticipated 4.785 million in 2027.
The earlier master plan predicted over 3 million in 2011 instead of the actual 332,659 (“89 percent below the projection”) leading Gilbert to conclude that “Hamilton Airport has a record of grossly overestimating its future passenger throughput” so even the lowest forecasts are unreliable. He backs that up with statistics on the drop in itinerant flights (to or from Hamilton to other airports).
“Aircraft activity at the airport has been in steep decline since 2001,” he notes. “The extent of the actual decline is more than 50 percent. If the trend since 2001 continues, the airport will have no flights at all in 2021.”
Gilbert goes on to show that Toronto and Buffalo’s airports increased their flights and passenger numbers in the same period and suggests this means the causes of the decline in activity at Hamilton’s airport are “intrinsic to this airport and not part of a general trend”. He concludes that forecasting a 28-fold increase in passengers by 2031 “is entirely unrealistic and should not be used as a basis for planning land use or anything else associated with the airport.”
Tradeport president Frank Scremin has filed a response to Gilbert’s statement, arguing that the changes to passenger volumes “have more to do with external circumstances than the airport itself” and that “the volatility is consistent with that observed at other regional airports in Canada.”
He says “passenger levels will increase again when the next carrier decides to be based at the airport” and that past changes “can only mean that future increases and decreases are also possible”. He maintains the privatization of the airport has provided major economic benefits to Hamilton and its location “is an important feature of its recent success and for the future development of further economic activity for the benefit of the city.”
Scremin’s statement has been submitted on behalf of Tradeport International which has party status at the OMB hearings, but the response to Gilbert from city witnesses has been muted. On the contrary, consultant Antony Lorius challenges the planner representing the two citizen groups, Gary Davidson, for suggesting that the aerotropolis is linked to the airport.
“Mr. Davidson appears to be of the view that a central reason for the determination of the airport area as the preferred location for future employment growth is the attractiveness of the airport facility itself,” writes Lorius. This is not correct. The central reason is access to the highway network, as explained in all of the reports I have prepared regarding the need for employment land in Hamilton.”
Lorius points to the highway six extension opened in 2004 and its connection to the 403 and goes on to argue that the failure of the existing airport business park to attract any industries in its twenty-year history is because of poor highway access.
“The historic lack of development in the Airport area is largely the result of this constraint,” says Lorius, pointing to activity in the North Glanbrook business park after the Red Hill Parkway was opened in 2007.
Residents can get an update on the OMB dispute on Wednesday evening at 6 pm at a city hall meeting organized by the Hamilton Civic League. The OMB hearings are open to the public and are taking place in the Albion Room of the Convention Centre starting Monday, January 14 at 10 am.