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supplement page 2 theres no such thing as a perfect site experts say theres no such thing as a perfect site for an air port that frank admission comes from provincial ex perts who cooperated with federal authorities in arriv ing at the choice of picker ing township as the loca tion for torontos second international airport the teams of investiga tors who narrowed the choice down from an initial 89 prospective sites to 59 locations worth some con sideration then to six sites warranting exhaustive study readily concede that even their final choice falls short of perfection however they add pick ering came out ahead of all others in overall criteria its a difficult process of comparison because all the criteria cannot be mea sured in dollars and cents or by other quantitative means while economic consider ations are important so are environmental and so cial factors such as the number of people who will be affected the sizes of communities that will be disrupted and the effect on the surrounding environ ment bearing in mind the hu man factors as well as the economic and geographic considerations the people who combined their efforts tives raised many ques tions and found the an swers among them technical capabilities pickering was found capa ble of accommodating the range of aircraft that would have to use the second to ronto airport it also meets minimum weather require ments limited fog snow icing and wind levels plus desirable wind direction provision for air traffic control the site chosen had to provide landing and takeoff patterns compatible with other airports partic ularly malton it could not present any conflict with existing airtrafficcontrol corridors proximity to market future as well as current transportation needs had to be met and future popula tion distribution taken into account capability of construc tion topographical limita tions ruled out some sites with their underground streams swamps bad drainage and other factors interconnection with mal ton a site much further from torontos present in ternational airport would pose difficult and costly complications for travelers needing to transfer from one terminal to another for interconnecting flights ecology and environ ment all sites had to be compared for the relative disruptions they would cause on the ecology on water courses wildlife vegetation and for the ef fects of water and air pol lution on parks conserva tion areas farmlands and builtup communities in this respect pickering ranked far ahead of many other potential sites social disruption consid eration was given to the numbers of persons who would be displaced and the degree to which existing communities could be pro tected from the airports impact planners counted the number of residences permanent and seasonal and considered the result ing interactions of com munitiestravel patterns community services the la bour forces available in ex isting and future communi ties servicing requirements these could be measured in dollars and gauged in physi cal terms the cost and practicality of water mains sewer lines ground transportation for both the airport and associated com munities costs the price of the land itself plus the costs of servicing and operating the site were of course care- new site fits regional plan the pickering site for the new airport and town of cedarwood is a natural out growth of the toronto- centred region plan ac cording to officials of the ontario department of treasury and economics the torontocentred re gion plan released in may of 1970 predicted a new major airport and stressed several planning objectives in the choice of location of the plan have pointed out that this report emphasized that the airport should be located where it could meet the requirements for future growth of the entire region other important consid erations included the inte gration of the airport into alreadyplanned transporta tion facilities and other ser vices accessibility to the travel market and the en couragement of growth -c3s- planning officials are satisfied that the new site matches all of these objec tives and requires the mini mum number of changes to the official plan although many details are still in the planning stages the pickering site appears to conform to the main points of the transpor tation grid outlined in the torontocentred plan the key element of the 1970 re- nort w the drodosal that pair of highperformance travel corridors spaced five to ten miles apart par allel to the lake ontario shore between hamilton and oshawa planning officials of the department of treasury and economics have shown that the airport and town site could be attached di rectly to the northern corri dor thereby saving the ad ditional expense of a spe cial transportation link be tween the airport and to- fully estimated so was the public cost what people would have to pay to use the airport in vehicle miles from toronto in travel time and what the price would be to set up and provide the services the public needs in and around any airport compatibility with re gional plans the site cho sen had to fit in with the concept already developed for the torontocentred region or risk costly and disruptive changes with ramifications that would be felt for decades to come the pickering site met this criterion most admirably pickering in short came out well ahead in most of the important respects by which all prospective air port sites were evaluated it meets all the safety re quirements it fills the technical needs for air transportation serving the toronto region it minimiz es to a large extent the ecological and environmen tal problems that an air port in any location would cause its disruption of the social pattern is slight it makes possible the provi sion of water sewerage and other services at rea sonable cost and it poses requirements for capital in vestment that fit readily with the aims of planners who have foreseen the fu ture needs of the toronto-