(46) Air Toronto

Aldous Huxley said that speed is the one truly modern pleasure. He probably didn't make that up sitting in a TTC vehicle going nowhere with sixty or more people experiencing the full deodorant meltdown of Toronto in August. To our frustration we were recently short turned twice during a single trip on the publically funded King streetcar line. While idling away precious, irrecoverable moments of our life we overheard portions of a topical conversation that set us to less selfish thinking about the complexities of civic transportation infrastructure.

The parties in conversation struck as educated, sensible Torontonians of moderate outlook. Why then, we wondered, were they so opposed to the expansion of air travel from Toronto Island Airport? My fellow travellers worked over a tangled host of issues from fossil fuel depletion to noise pollution, global warming and traffic congestion.

Regular readers know that the POWcityblog bunker is near flight paths out of Toronto Island. While we have no love for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority we find the gentle, random buzz of light aviation, and the more purposeful drone of the occasional C-130 or restored Lancaster bomber, comfortingly modern. We also need to get around.

Frustrated as much by the slow pace of our streetcar as by its operator's decision to wear white gym socks with her grey uniform slacks that day we began to wish the romantic and logistical advantages of aeronautical science could be applied to urban mass transit.

We resolved to write to the Premier of Ontario in regard to having Mississauga City Hall, Black Creek Pioneer Village, High Park and all of Riverdale levelled and paved over to provide runways and terminals for a massive fleet of low-altitude, inter-suburban airliners. As we position our city for the challenges of the twenty-first century can we do any less?

Amalgamated, post-Tory Toronto is now such an unholy mess of smog-choked sprawl we will soon be forced to fly between work and home. The sooner we convert the entire city into an airport the better!

As the 504 car finally returned us to Poorkdale we set up the Cray III supercomputer to provide economic data and scientific models in support of our proposal. Almost instantaneously the Cray III generated the single most important element of the marketing effort required for what will be a $19.4 billion dollar infrastructure plan: a photo of the shoes specified by Porter Airlines for its stewardesses on flights to Ottawa, Halifax, New York and Baltimore. A stark choice faces our commuting citizens: the freedom of the skies and high heels or gridlock and gym socks.