Island airport generates $1.9B for Toronto: port authority
Posted November 9, 2012 1:42 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The island airport generates $1.9 billion for the city every year, the Toronto Port Authority (TPA) said Friday.
Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is an “essential facility, in the growth of trade and tourism for Toronto,” TPA president and CEO Geoffrey Wilson said in a statement.
Wilson pointed to the airport’s double-digit passenger growth and that it serves both business and tourist travellers as reasons for its success.
Porter Airlines has operated at the airport since 2006. Air Canada service was added in 2011.
“With two world-class airlines…it has grown to become the ninth-business airport in Canada,” Wilson said.
The Toronto Board of Trade and the TPA released the report from InterVistas Consulting group.
The report highlights that ongoing operations at Billy Bishop generate total annual economic impacts of:
• $1.9 billion in economic output;
• Approximately 5,700 jobs representing 5,400 person years of employment (1,700 of these jobs are directly associated with YTZ);
• $640 million in gross domestic product (GDP);
• $290 million in wages, and
• Overall tax revenue and payments-in-Lieu of taxes of approximately $57 million annually.
In March, construction began on a 240-metre-long tunnel that will link pedestrians from the foot of Bathurst Street to the island airport — Canada’s 14th busiest airport in terms of passengers handled in 2010.
The project is expected to take two years to build and will cost $82.5 million.
More than 1.5 million passengers travelled through the island airport last year.
