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| - This past year I've been traveling a lot to the US. Yes Pearson is clean and modern looking, as many have noted. Compared to some of the major American hubs like O'Hare, LAX and Hartfield, it looks fresher and feels less busy. That said, being clean looking and having free wifi can't make up for two glaring facts which are not entirely the fault of the airport management.
YYZ is 30 km from downtown Toronto and offers no simple, reliable, timely and fairly priced links to downtown or the public transit network. There are some public transit buses but those quickly crowd up (try it with luggage) and take long to get downtown: 2 hours+ on my last try. A private shuttle bus costs $22 one way and takes about 45 minutes to get downtown. A taxi to downtown $50-75 and good luck with traffic. In contrast, SFO has a BART station that costs $8 to get downtown SF. Chicago has subway stations at *both* airports; $3 will get you to the loop in one trip. Vancouver's SkyTrain links YVR to downtown for $7.50. The list goes on. There are plans in motion to build a rail connection by augmenting an existing commuter line that passes near YYZ. It seems to be happening, but it has been mired in all sorts of political nonsense along the way that who knows. We're suppose to get it in 2015. 30 years too late in my opinion.
The second point has to do with air fares, which is more of the fault of the regulation of airline industry in Canada. There's simply not enough competition to drive prices to be competitive. It bugs me to no end that for much of my US travel, I can drive 2 hours to Buffalo, NY, pay for parking and still save money (sometimes a couple hundred $) instead of flying out of Pearson. I don't like doing it but the price sometimes calls for it, as it does for many other GTA denizens. BUF has made good business serving as Toronto's "auxiliary" airport, and good for them. But bad on YYZ. And don't even start into domestic flight fares. Point is, to be fairer to the average consumer in the GTA, the big Canadian carriers at Pearson need more pressure from competition to charge more reasonable fares. And that's saying nothing of the high extra surcharges to both airlines and passengers using YYZ.
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