UP Express fare to include hidden parking fee

Travellers riding the city’s new airport train will avoid Toronto traffic. But they will still pay a portion of the cost of parking at Pearson International Airport.

In an agreement some are calling a blatant cash grab, each UP Express ticket will include a $2 airport fee, money the Greater Toronto Airports Authority says will help compensate for lost parking revenue when people start taking the train rather than driving to the airport.

Metrolinx, the provincial agency building the $456-million rail link from Union Station to Pearson, is anticipating 5,000 riders a day, about 1.8 million annually.

Although it hasn’t announced the fares yet, it is expected they will be between $20 and $30.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins confirmed that the agency has agreed to pay the the airports authority a fee based on ridership.

“As part of our stakeholder agreement with GTAA, Metrolinx is required to provide GTAA a payment as a condition for building the station at Pearson and providing service to UP customers. The initial estimate in the agreement is $1.85 (2011) per passenger. The final amount, however, has not yet been set,” she said.

The fee will be built into the UP Express business plan.

“We have to make sure it’s affordable but it also meets the needs of the business,” said Aikins.

The fares will be announced later this year, ahead of the opening of the UP Express next year. The GTAA’s goal is to break even, said its spokesperson, Trish Krale.

“It’s just a portion of the revenues we expect to lose, and the revenues we expect to lose will be substantially from parking fees … . In addition to that we do expect some impact to other revenue that we derive from ground transportation,” she said.

The number of people travelling through Pearson is expected to nearly double by 2030, to about 60 million from 36 million last year, said Krale. Travellers flying out of Pearson pay a $25 airport improvement fee; connecting passengers pay $4.

Taxi and limo drivers also pay a fixed monthly licensing fee to operate out of the airport. Krale would not say how much.

Transit activist Rick Ciccerelli calls the airport fee “highway robbery.”

“We’re trying to solve a problem with congestion in the city. We should be looking for agencies to contribute as opposed to find ways to exploit. I know the GTAA is worried this is somehow going to take away from their parking revenues, but I think it’s outrageous,” said Ciccerelli, who has lobbied for more stops on the line than the two stations at Bloor and Weston.

“You would think they would be glad to have less congestion of vehicles at the airport. There’s no reason other than a cash grab,” said NDP MP Mike Sullivan (York South-Weston), who has also pushed to have the service priced affordably for the approximately 40,000 people who work at the airport.

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The shuttle will run every 15 minutes in both directions. The trains, called diesel multiple units, are being manufactured in Japan and assembled in the U.S., with the first now undergoing testing in Illinois. They’ll be shipped to Toronto starting later this summer.

The Airport Express bus that has shuttled directly between downtown Toronto hotels and Pearson is shutting down Oct. 31. Toronto residents still have the option of using the TTC subway and Airport Rocket bus.

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