People walk through the pedestrian tunnel running from the mainland to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport in Toronto on Thursday, July 30, 2015.Darren Calabrese
A pedestrian tunnel to Toronto's downtown airport has opened, linking the harbour islands to the mainland for the first time in more than 160 years.
The 30-metre-deep tunnel was inaugurated Thursday morning and opened in the afternoon to members of the public heading to the airport.
Geoff Wilson, chief executive officer of Ports Toronto, which operates the airport, called it "truly a momentous occasion." The agency's chair, Mark McQueen, noted that "the city got itself a free tunnel."
Outbound passengers will access the tunnel via a set of six elevators that takes them down in about 30 seconds. Once they are deep underground, the broad passageway stretches 165 metres into the distance. There are two moving sidewalks, set at a sedate pace, and a centre aisle for those who prefer to walk unaided.
"We wanted to keep the design through the tunnel really simple," said Paul Stevens, senior principal at ZAS Architects. "Then we … splashed a little colour here as well. You see the yellows and the blues and so on, and those are just notional gestures to the water above and the sun above that."
On the island side, passengers are brought to ground level by two banks of extra-long escalators. Greeting them at the top is a replica of the biplane flown by World War One ace Billy Bishop, for whom the airport is named, in an airy atrium.
The ferry will continue to operate. But the fixed link joins the island to the mainland for the first time since a 19th-century storm washed out land at the east end, turning what had been a peninsula into a separate formation.
A tunnel was approved as long ago as the 1930s, but that work stopped after a change in government. David Miller won the mayoralty in 2003, partly on a pledge to stop a bridge to the islands. The idea of a tunnel re-emerged later that decade and work began in 2012.
Porter Airlines chief Bob Deluce – who more than anyone has turned the once-sleepy airport into a well-used facility – said the tunnel should help his push for jets.
"The councillors that are involved have to decide at the end of the day whether the plans that we have articulated … can be accommodated at this airport in a way that still keeps the airport in balance with the rest of the waterfront," he said.
"We think it can, and I think the tunnel goes a long way to ensuring that there's a really quite good compatibility with the waterfront."