June 30th, 2009

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Politics, Travel
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Edmonton’s Airport Debate

Apparently Edmonton has a municipal airport a stone’s throw away from the centre of town. It’s called Edmonton City Centre Airport (also known as Blatchford Field), and has been around in some form or another since 1929. Google Maps says it’s 4.4 km from the airport to Edmonton’s City Hall, or seven minutes of driving time.

I gather that the airport is used for regional flights and private air travel. It also gets annually converted into a race track for the Edmonton Indy. Larger aircraft and international flights come through the Edmonton International Airport, which is 26 km southwest of the city centre.

According to the CBC, there’s been a long debate about the airport’s future:

Some of the people who have made submissions to the public hearing want the downtown airport closed and the land developed into a transit-oriented community with housing for thousands of people, along with commercial and retail space.

Other presenters have told city councillors the airport must stay open because it is vital for the business community. They describe it as a hub to the north and argue that it is critical for medevac flights. About 4,000 medevac flights a year go through the facility.

I learned about this whole business from Mack’s site. He’s started NotMyAirport.ca (here’s the associated Facebook group), which argues for replacing the airport with “a new transit-oriented, green community”, as well as an expansion of Edmoton’s NAIT campus. Removal of the airport would also apparently change building height limitations in the city, which is a good thing. A dense city, after all, is a healthy city.

Mack launched his site in response to SaveOurAirport.ca, which argues that the airport “plays a vital role in making Edmonton one of Canada’s leading health centres, as a hub for air ambulance and other essential health services for all of Alberta, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.” This claim is disputed by the CEO of Edmonton Airports in the aforementioned CBC article, who says “”what the City Centre Airport offers is a tremendous amount of convenience for corporate travellers and those people who live in the downtown area and have private aircraft.”

SaveOurAirport.ca is run by the Alberta Enterprise Group. Looking at their board members, they seem to be mostly local business owners.

Are you an Edmontonian? What do you think of this debate?

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Comments: 9 Responses so far

Paul Ney
June 30th, 2009
10:36 am

I am the city’s biggest proponent of mass transit (ok, I’m exaggerating a bit, but not by much). So I think a transit-oriented community would be great. However, transit service city-wide is terrible at the moment. This is something that needs to be dealt with before we start building communities to be services by said transit.

Secondly, high-density housing can be dangerous if it’s not matched with mid-to-high income tenants. Building this community literally across the street (Yellowhead) from Edmonton’s biggest train yard doesn’t seem like it would facilitate that goal.

I don’t personally use the municipal airport (although my significant other, as a small-plane pilot does), and so I am not opposed to closing the airport. But that’s only if the money would NOT detract from LRT/transit expansion funds, and if there was a more sustainable development proposed than high-density residential in a low-propoerty-value area.

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darren Reply:
June 30th, 2009 at 10:40 am

Thanks for your comment. I know little about Edmonton’s urban planning, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume that you can’t middle to high income housing near a train yard. Vancouver is a testament to, as one Calgarian put it, “nice things next to junky things”. Just look at Gastown.

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Mack D. Male
June 30th, 2009
10:46 am

Paul: the only way we’re going to realize the LRT Network Plan and expand service throughout the city is by creating pockets of high density along the way.

I don’t believe that closing ECCA would detract at all from LRT expansion funding. There is no funding for transit that is contingent on the ECCA’s continued existence nor its eventual closure.

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Evan
June 30th, 2009
10:48 am

There are plenty of better places to redevelop that wont harm the edmonton commuter air traffic. Many people I know make use of it all the time from downtown.
A trip to Calgary from downtown via the Muni, (including commute to the airport)is noticeably shorter than via the international, where it takes almost as long as it takes to drive to Calgary.
The Edmonton Airport Authority has been trying to make the muni fail for the last decade or so. Of course its losing money, they wanted to make that happen.
I liked it when flights within canada landed me downtown instead of in the middle of nowhere.
Not to mention the first time I ever flew a plane, it was from the muni via their “discovery flight” service.
Most large cities have two airports, one closer to downtown for commuters and one elsewhere for international flights.
I will laugh when the international airport reaches capacity and has to build more runways or terminals, after they destroyed an easy way to increase capacity when required.
We need to look to the future and be ready for it, and EIA needs to use their asset instead of trying to kill it.

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Another darren Reply:
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:17 pm

Yeah ok there are other places to develop we all know that, but a very small percentage of edmontonians use the airport! I know I haven’t used it, I’ve always used the International. By bulldozing tarmac (not existing houses) we have this vast swath of land in which we can start over from scratch and redevelop a greener, more sustainable Edmonton that builds up and not out. Yeah sure other cities have airports NEAR their downtown, NOT in their downtown. Our airport deters and prevents skyscraper construction and this leads to a less sustainable city. So what is your point with the EIA reaching capacity? Do you think that the ECCA will actually mitigate this risk, there is no room for the ECCA to expand it is in the middle of the city if you haven’t noticed!

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Chris
June 30th, 2009
12:13 pm

That airport is insane! I lived for two years underneath the flight path near the landing strip and I swear I had to duck once in awhile when a plane was landing. (mind you, at 6′6″ maybe it’s my fault.)

Plus the noise itself is outrageous.

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Derek K. Miller
June 30th, 2009
2:30 pm

I have no idea how the airport is for Edmonton, but I certainly appreciated it the one time I flew in from Vancouver and landed so close to downtown. Even Saskatoon’s airport is further away (though still pretty close, about 6 km), and that’s a considerably smaller city.

For reference, Edmonton International is about 30 km away, while Vancouver International is about 14 km from its downtown. O’Hare is about 27 km and Midway about 15 km from Chicago — and Denver’s airport is almost 40 km away from its downtown.

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darren Reply:
June 30th, 2009 at 6:25 pm

Thanks for that. Another data point is that Toronto’s Pearson Airport is 27 km away.

Of course, it’s only a question of distance. Traffic makes a huge difference. I always find that it takes a particularly long time, for example, to get into downtown Toronto from the airport.

I meant to add that, based on the Wikipedia entry for the airport, there are no longer inter-provincial flights from the Edmonton City Centre Airport.

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Darren James Harkness
July 1st, 2009
7:37 am

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned so far is the financial benefit Edmonton City would receive from the additional property taxes that could be collected by removing the municipal airport.

Given the recent tax increases and last year’s overly enthusiastic property assessment hikes, opening up new property in the heart of the city would - at least in theory - somewhat lessen the tax burden for Edmonton homeowners.

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