A comprehensive survey of passengers flying from Toronto international airport, May-June, 1968

..

..

" A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PASSENGERS FLYING FROM TORONTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, MAY-JUNE, 1968"

by

Murray G. McLeod

Manuscript received May 1969

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author wishes to thank the many people who co-operated so willingly and who were so generous with their help for the project.

Gratitude is expressed to Dr. G. N. Patterson, Director of the Institute for Aerospace Studies for providing the opportunity to carry out research in a relatively new field (for the Institute).

Professor B. Etkin as graduate advisor provided valuable guidance and continued encouragement. Professor R. Wormleighton proposed much of the statis-tical methodology.

MapYLp e9ple helped carry out the passenger survey. To the Aerospace Institute students (and their professors) and my own personal friends who did such a conscientious job at the airport, my sincere thanks.

Special appreciation is extended to all the Toronto airlines, their air-port managers and their staff who co-operated readily with the survey.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Janice, for the valuable help she gave at all stages of the work - the passenger surveys, collating the questionaires, the driving study and the typing of the original report.

SUMMARY

The first part of this thesis describes a departure lounge survey of scheduled outbound passengers at Toronto International Airport. The survey teok place in

1968

from May 27th to June 2nd and covered about

6

percent of all outbound passengers during the survey week.

The survey measured the following characteristics of Toronto air trave-llers: age, sex, marital status, income, residence, occupation, work of employer, frequency of travel by air, trip purpose, means of transportation to the airport and travel time to the airport. In addition, maps were pro-duced which showed the origin pattern of the air travelIers.

Sufficient data was collected for performing a correlation analysis to formulate zonal passenger generation equations using land use and socio-economie data.

The second part of the thesis deals with airport access: driving time to the airport, the various means of transportation to the airport and the corresponding fares and travel times.

L

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Destination of the Toronto Air Traveller Purpose of the Study

Definitions PAGE 1 1 2 2 11. DESCRIPrION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF' TORONTO AIR TRAVEL SURVEY 3

Extent of the Survey 3

Design of the Sample

4

The Survey Questionnaire

4

Limitations of the Survey 5

111. FINDINGS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTD AIR TRAVEL SURVEY

7

TV •

The Characteristics of the Toronto Air Traveller

7

A Description of the Passenger Origin Pattern 9 Some Details of the Passenger Origin Pattern 10

Regions of Highest Generation of Passengers 10 - Explanation of the High Generation of Air 11

Passengers by Zone 1

- Generation of Passengers by Hotels 11 - Generation of Passengers by Six Selected Zones 12 - Origin Pattern of the Residents and Non-Residents 13

Travel Time to the Airport 13

Effect of Flight Destination 13

- The Domestic Passenger 15

- The Transborder Passenger 15

- The International Passenger 15

How Passenger Characteristics Change from Day to Day 16 During the Week

How Passenger Characteristics Change from Hour to Hour 18 During the Day

Distribution of Zone 1 Originating Passengers by Flight18 Departure Time

Effect of Income

A DESCRIPrION OF GROUND ACCESS TO TORONTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

19 20

A. Description of Ground Access to Toronto Internationa120 Airport, November, 1968.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

24

APPENDIX A: DESIGNING, ARRANGING FOR AND CARRYING OUT THE SURVEY - The Keller Study

Choice of the Survey Period

Obtaining Co-operation for the Survey Choosing the Flight Sample

Selection of Survey Staff Surveying the Passengers

Some Observations Made and Ideas Arrived at While Conducting the Sur-vey

- Cost of the Survey

APPENDIX B: ERROR BOUNDS ON THE SURVEY RESULTS

APPENDIC C: DATA AVAILABLE FROM THE AIR TRAVEL SURVEY

INTRODUCTION

Toronto International Airport is Canada's busiest airport for scheduled flights. It presently handles some 5~ million passengers per year. (The second and third busiest airports are at Montreal and Vancouver respectively.) During the years from 1950 to 1967 the number of Toronto boarding passengers

increased by a factor of 10; Similar increases are expected in the next 20 years as Figure 1 shows.

This phenomenal growth in air travel at Toronto has 1?layed havoc with planning. Just two years af ter the new 30 million dollar terminal complex was opened in February of 1964, a strain was felt on the air passenger facilities. In order to handle Toronto's snowballing passenger traffic, a new terminal building is planned for the early 1970's.

Throughout the world, air travel growth rates and the trend towards larger and costlier aircraft both dictate higher and higher expenditures for airport facilities. Only through thorough research can this expenditure be properly allocated. Airport planners must have a better picture of the type of people they are planning for. Where do the air passengers originate within a particular city? Are there socio-economic characteristics which explain this distribution of origins? If so, could these socio-econoFác characteristics be used to fore-cast future volumes and distributions of passengers travelling to and from the airport on the ground? These questions can be answered only through air pas se-nger sur-.reys.

Comprehensive air pass enger surveys have already been conducted for airports at the following major cities: London, England; New York; Chicago; and Los

Angeles. The results have all been published. Surveys have also been made for governments but the results have not been published. This was the case for a one-day survey done at Toronto International Airport in 1966. This survey gave the loc al destinations of air travellers, employees, and visitors leaving the Toronto airport on the ground. No socio-economic information was collected.

Universities can be of assistance in carr;)ring out airport studies and can do so quite inexpensively. I t is hoped that this report will con:bribute to

our knowledge of Toronto's air passengers and by doing so, help airport planners, transportation planners, and the airlines operating in Toronto.

The Destination of the Torontó Air Traveller

The distribution of flights to and from Toronto is useful in assessing Toronto's community of interest with other major cities. Published origin-destination statistics indicate that most oi' Toronto's air passenger trip interchanges take place with Montreal, New York, Chicago, ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Figure 2 shows the 1967 distribution of passengers outbound from Toronto to Canadian and A~erican destinations. These statistics were obtained from a sample of ticket s~ubs from the two Canadian carriers only and do net include the flights by the American carriers. The flows shown to

American destinations are approximately one half what they would have been if the American carriers had been included.

The upper part of Figure 2 shows for 1967 the proportion of passengers going to overseas destinations as well as to North American destinations.

Purpose of the Study

This study is part of a program in air transportation at the Institute for Aerospace Studies of the University of Toronto. The work was both initiated by and sponsored by the University.

The area of air transportation which is currently of interest at the Institute is short-haul transport and its potential in the Toronto area. It was felt that a good indicator of this potential would be the number of travel-lers coming from each of the population centres around Toronto to take an

outbound fligh~.

An initial investigation showed that very little information about this passenger origin distribution was available. The airlines' knowledge of the origin pattern was largely qualitative, the source being reports by airlines ticket agents. It was then decided to conduct a survey of passengers who fly out of Toronto. By making the survey as gener al as possible it was felt

that the results could be made useful to planners and researchers in all fields.

Many of the analyses in the latter part of this repor~ are oriented towards the airport access problem: that of getting to and from the airport.

It is well recognized that of the total time required for an air trip, more than half this time is of ten spent on the ground getting to and from airports.

At the present time, Toronto travellers have relatively good access to the airport. (The various means of transportation to the airport are described in the latter paxt of this report). The situation in the fu~ure, however, may be very different if air travel at Toronto continues to grow as it has in the past. The impact of the jumbo jets may create unique problems of passenger collection and distribution. Perhaps a partial solution can be arrived at through the creation of V-STOL ports. GO transit service to the airport might also be very effective. (G~transit or Government of Ontario transit is a highly successful commuter rail service running from HaIDilton to Pickering). In the near future, ground traffic between downtown Toronto and the airport may be sufficient to warrant ~he addition of an airport link to

the GO transit system.

In summary then, this report attempts to answer the following questions: 1) What type of people use Toronto International Airport? 2) Where do they

come from, i.e., where do they originate their ground trip to the airport?

3) How do they get to the airport? 4) Can thè passenger origin pattern be explained by means of the socio-economic data?

At the same time this report probes the feasibility of conducting an airline passenger survey at a Canadian airport and shows what problems are involved in designing and carrying out such a survey.

Definitions

Domestic Flight:

the destination of the flight is in Canada.

..

Transborder Flight:

the destination of the flight is in the United States. Interna.tional Flight:

the destination of the flight is other than in Canada or the United States.

Locally Boarding Passenger:

one who has originated locally for the flight. Transfer Passenger:

one who has to come to the airport on another flight. Boarding Passenger:

CED:

MTARTS:

one who passes through the departure lounge and boards the aircraft. is either a locally boarding passenger or a transfer passenger.

central business district.

bounded by College Street on the north, Front Street on the south, Jarvis Street on the east, and University Avenue on the west.

Metropolitan Toronto and Region Transportation Study. a comprehensive transportation study done in 1964. II. DESCRIPrION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TOR01\1TO AIR TRAVEL SURVEY

Extent of the Survey

Survey questionnaires were distributed to each of the passengers on 87 !'andomly-selected flights from Toronto International Airport during the week of May 27th to June 2nd~ 1968. The 87 flights chosen represented a typically cross-section of the 1026 scheduled outbound flights during the survey week (an 8~ percent flight sample).

The questionnaires were handed out to passengers as they entered the depar-ture lounges. (A full account of the survey operation is given in Appendix A). The pa.ssengers surveyed were either just boarding at Toronto or transferring aft er arri ving at Toronto on another flight.

Out of a total of 3987 passengers who boarded the sampled flights, 2920 returned a useable questionnaire fOT an overall percent response of 73.2 percent. Of the useable questionnaires returned 2340 were completed in the departure lounge and the remaining 580 were returned by mail in the envelopes provided.

\

Statistics from the

1

1

scheduled airlines at Toronto indicated that

47,276

passengers boarded their aircraft through the departure lo~nges during the survey

week. Therefore, useable questionnaires came from

6.2

percent of all boarding passengers during the survey week.

On every survey day, each boarding passenger had an equal chance of being

included in the survey sample. Design of the Sample

Two statistical techniques were incorporated into the sample design-stratified

sampling and replicated sampling. The former technique ensures that the flight

sample is truly representative of all flights while the latter makes it possible

to put estimated error bounds on each survey result.

The flight sampling was stratified in order to make sure that the charac-teristics of the survey flight sample were present in the same proportion as

they occurred in the collective group of all outbound flights. In designing

the sample it was felt that two characteristics should be stratified; the air -line and the flight destination by direction (north, south, east or west). A

complete description of the sample selection process is also given in the

appendix.

Replicated sampling was used in the random assignment of sample flights

to subgroups or replicates. (At the suggestion of Professor R. Wormleighton

of the University of Toronto,

4

replicates were used). Each replicate acts as

an independent sample and furnishes a separate estimate of a survey result.

The variance of a re sult between replicates is used to contruct a confidence interval for that result. Suppose, for example, that the four replicates each

furnish an independent estimate of the proportion of all Toronto boarding

passengers coming from Hamilton. The mean of these estimates gives the overall

survey estimate. The variance is used to contruct a confidence interval about

the survey estimate. If a 95 percent confidence interval is placed about the

estimate, then it can be said that there is a 95 percent chance that the true proportion of all passengers coming to the airport from Hamilton during the

survey week lies within the limits of our confidence interval.

The Survey Questionnaire

Many ideas for the survey questionnaire came from the questionnaire used

by Keller in his

1966

survey of West Virginia ai.r passengers. The Keller questionnaire was in turn of the same type as that used by the Port of New

York Authority.

Most of the Keller survey was carried out in flight with a captive audience

- a very captive audience~ Naturally, a questionnaire for a survey carried out

exclusively on the ground would have to be designed even more carefully than

an in-flight questionnaire for it to be equally successful.

A copy of the questionnaire used in this survey is to be found on the

inside of the back cover of this report.

It was necessary to restriet the physical dimensions of the questionnaire

because some of the questionnaires would be placed in envelopes and returned by

mail. Top priority was given to brevity - a passenger is far more apt to fill out a simple questionnaire of about 12 questions than an extended written interrogation, several pages in lengtho

Alternative wordings were given much thoughto Precision in wordings is essential to ensure that the passenger 's interp!'etation is exactly the same as that of the questionnaire designer 0 Diplomacy is sometimes requiredo The final

two very personal questions on age and family inco~e were padded with the

statement: "Answer the following if you like" 0 It was fel t that if no such statement were made 9 many passengers would be angered by these questions and

would simply refuse to answer the questionnaire 0 The income brackets were made

relatively wide sa that the passenger would feel that a minimlli~ of prying was

being doneo

Attractiveness and convenience were given due consideration in the question-naire designo IBM mark-sense questionnai:ces and column punch-out cards were

ruled out immediately because of visual cQmplexity and cost. To make it more

convenient for the passenger to complete the questionnaire, a small pencil was inserted in each questionnaireo

The final form of the questionnaire was accepted by all airlines involved in the survey 0

Limitations of the Survel

The findings of this survey cannot be considered to be average for the

year 19680 I t is hoped, however~ that they are representative and that the

distributions and characteristics are indicative of the patterns that exist

throughout the year 0 It must, however, be realized that air travel at 'I'oronto

is very seasonal with a larger numilier of holiday trips in the summero Winter

passen~ers will have different characteristics and possibly a slightly different origin pattern than summer passengers. In order to get a sample which would be

fairly representative of the entire year, a week was selected in the period of transistion from the winter lull to the summer peako (See F'igure 3) 0 During

the last week of May, which was used for the sUI""J"ey, holiday itravel has just

nicely startedo In fact~ on the average, about one person i~ three is likely

to be on holidays or visi"ting friends 0 This will be shown la:ter when the survey

results are presentedo

No survey results should be presented without an accompanying appraisal

of the biases which may be inherent in those results 0 Three sources of bias are

very mueh worth discussing: non-randoriLlleSS of the sample selection; weakness

in the survey method; and the rejeetion of the survey questionnaire by certain

types of people 0

The fi!'st type of bias to be l.ooked at is whether the sample represents the universe, ioeo, whether the sample flights adequately represent the group of all

flights during the weeko To minimize this type of error, flights were selected

randomly using a table of random numbers, ioeo, each flight had an equal prob-ability of being included in the sample 0 Stratification of the sample was also employed to ensure that all airlines and destinations were represented in the

sample in the correct proportiono One way to check randomness of a sample is

to compare the results it generates with the results generated by an entirely

different sample 0 During the survey week,

9

ext!'a flights were surveyed in

addition to the

87

randomly selected flights. The results from these extra

flights were very similar to those of the actual survey flights even though the

extra flights were not randomly selected beforehand.

The second type of bias is probably in some form in any survey, namely,

that there is a weakness in the survey method used. The Air'_Travel survey had

two in particular.

I

The first weakness was that the method of collection of questionnaires was

not uniform. Passengers arriving in the departure lounge during the last 20 minutes before departure, too late to complete the questionnaire in the lounge, were given envelopes for returning the questionnaire by mail. Because this

required more voluntary effort on their part, it was not as convenient for the

late-arriving passenger to return the questiolliîaire as it was for the

early-arr~v~ng passenger. This was reflected in the percent return of useable

questionnaires by the two modes. The percent return of the mailed questionnaires

was

45

percent while the percent return of the questio~naires completed in the lounge was

87

percent. (The overafl percent return was

73

.2

percent). For this reason the late-arriving passengers were not represented as well as the early-arriving passengers in the overall survey. Fortunately,

68

percent of

the passengers were the early-arriving type.

The second weakness in the survey,method was that the overseas envelopes were not pre-stamped like the Canadian and American envelopes. Instead, a

dime was given to the passenger to cover postage. (It would have required a

great deal of extra time and expense to amass a collection of current overseas postage stamps. In addition there is very little time to search for the correct

postage stamp when the passenger is running for his plane). The result was

that overseas flights had poorer mail returns than theCCanadian and American

flights.

The third type of bias is one which would have entered the survey results

regardless of the survey methode Certain types of people are less willing to help out in a survey than others. A trace of systematic rejection of the questionnaires quite understandably came from the most elderly passengers. It

was felt, however, that this rejection did not seriously influence the results.

Trip purpose may have also had a slight systematic effect. It was noticed that

passengers on holidays were not as much in the mood for completing a

question-naire as a business man making a routine trip. For this reason, holiday flights had a slightly lower return.

The problem of non-response to particular questions of the questionnaire was not a major prohlem - there were no questions which were weakly responded

to ... .. not even the last two questions on age and income. The income category was specified in 85 percent of the useable questionnaires.

One problem which was encountered when the survey results were being pr o-cessed was that about one-quarter of the useable questionnaires had a city or town of origin specified but-the nearest major intersection to the origin

was not. This had the unfortunate result of making the'_Toronto origin

infor-mation less useful while having no effect on the origin-outside-Toronto

infor-mation where fine detail was not required.

One final word of caution ...•.•. this report covers onlya fraction of the total picture of Toronto International Airport. It does net concern itself with

the movement of cargo, general aviation passengers, passengers on chartered

flights or employees of the airport itself . The results of the survey apply

only to the scheduled air passenger using Toronto International Airport.

III. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TORONTO AIR TRAVELLER

A cross section of the characteristics of passengers who use Toronto

International Airport is given in Figure

4

.

These results were obtained by

totalling the useable questionnaire responses of passengers on the

87

surveyed

outbound flights. They include the characteristics of transferring passengers

(25 percent of all passengers) as well as the characteristics of the

locally-boarding passengers.

We would expect half of the locally-board·ing passengers (75 percent of

total) to be local residents, i.e., 37~ percent, and the remaining half to be

non-residents making the return portion of their trip. The totals indicate,

however, th at about 39 percent of the passengers were local residents.

The first rather remarkable result is that almost half of the passengers

were paying their way themselves. Only half of the passengers were travelling

purelyon business. One would have thought that at the end of May, a good

majority of the passengers would be flying on business.

The traveller of today is used to a high level of service and is willing

to pay for that service even if the money comes from his own pocket. Probably

many businessmen are so áccus~omed to travelling by air th at they want to fly

when they go on vacation.

Slightly over two-thirds of the passengers are male. (See also Figure

5.).

This is probably because executives and managers make up two-fifths of all

passengers and very few women fall into this category.

The age distribution is very strongly peaked as shown in Figure

6.

Seventy-two percent of the passengers are between the ages of 25 and

54.

Toronto air travellers tend to be financially well-to-do as Figure 7

demonstrates. The histogram was constructed from the results listed in Figure

4

and the income distrLbution curve shown was drawn in using the histogram.

Forty-five percent of the travellers surveyed had an annual family income of

over $15,000 and

73

percent had an income of over $10,000. These figures compare well with accepted values of income for air travellers in the United

States. Martin Wohl states that about 50 percent of the American air travellers

have annual household incomes exceeding $15,000 and 75 percent have incomes

exceeding $10,0001 .

Locally originating air travellers at Toronto are similar to American air

travellers in t,heir means of getting to the airport:

TRA.~PORTATION TO THE AIRPORT

automobiles

taxi

&

limousine

public transportation Toront.o Survey

61.

0 percent

3105

11

705

1f 7 American Airports2

60

percent

32

11

8

11

Because the distribution of local passenger orlglns is so widespread as will be seen in the next section, air passengers find it cheaper, more

conveni-ent and faster to use their automobiles to get to the airport. Non-residents

tend to use taxis and limousines or rented autos. A histogram of the Toronto

survey results showing the means of airport access is given in Figure 8.

Many of the passengers at Toronto are frequent flyers. Figure 9 is a graph of the air trip frequency distribution. (The areas of the histogram bars are

proportional to the percentages indicated in Figure 4. The trip frequency

distribution curve has been drawn through this histogram)_. Only 17 percent of the travellers surveyed had not made any air trips during the past year. Of

the passengers remaining it was most common to have made two or three trips during the previous year. An astonishing 20 percent of the passengers had made

at least 20 trips during the past year.

As mentioned before, only 50 percent of the passengers were flying mainly

for business reasons. One fifth of these business travellers were flying to or from a business convention while the remainder were involved more in direct business transactions.

Thirty-sixxp~lt'!cent of all passengers were either on holidays or visiting friends or relatives. Only

3

percent were travelling on account of a personal emergency.

Approximately one passenger out of seventeen was making the trip for both business and personal reasons.

Consider an outbound flight from Toronto. About 40 percent of the passengers enplaned will be employed in the Toronto area. Most of the remaining passengers will be employed in the destination city. For this reason the responses to the

question "What work are you or your employer engaged in?", reflect the character

of Toronto and the destination cities, weighted according to their importance

as destination cities.

The survey indicates that industries producing and distributing goods are

probably not much better stimulators of air travel than the service industries.

The findings of studies in the United States are very similar. The survey

of Los Angeles air passengers in March 19673 , gave proportions of passengers employed in the manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing and service industries

which were very similar to the proportions given by the Toronto survey results.

Toronto air travellers have a good spread of occupations. But almost half of the travellers are in the executive-managerial or professional-technical

brackets. Housewives make up 14 percent of the passengers. Salesmen account

for on~y

5

percent. The majority of salesmen probably find the automobile a

more convenient means of travel because it gives them more flexibility when they have several business appointments spread out over an area. The low proportion

1. "A Not So Common View of the GrounQ. Transportation Problem", by Martin Wohl, RAND Corporation report number P-3736, November 1967.

2. "Planning the Airport Environment", by Michael J. Meshenberg,

Repott number 231, American Society of Planning Officials, February 1968. 3. "Surve of Los A eles International Airport Scheduled Air Passenger Ma:rlket"

Landrum

&

Brown, Cincinnatti, Ohio, March 19

of government/military personnel present on the surveyed flights (about 1 in 20 passengers) is somewhat surprising, considering that Toronto is the

provin-cial capitalof Ontario. Possibly some of the civil servants felt that they

were better classified by some other occupation category.

Error bounds for the overall survey results (Figure 4) are given in

Appendix B.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PASSENGER ORIGIN PATTERN

The origin distribution was plotted on two separate maps - one of Toronto i tself, the other of Southern Ontario. 'rhe survey indicated that 70 percent

of all Toronto local boarding passengers came from inside Metropolitan Toronto

and the other 30 percent came from the remaining part of Southern Ontario.

The pattern of passenger origins within Metropolitan Toronto is shown in

Figure 11. The Toronto origin pattern has a number of remarkable features. The main eye-catcher is a dense cluster of origins coincident with the Royal York Hotel near the foot of Yonge Street. Other major dot clusters are hotels or business intersections. The Skyline, Constellation, Hoiiday Inn on Highway 27, Inn on the Park, and Park Plaza hotels are all distinctly shown. The dot concentrations along Yonge Street are the major business at Eglinton, St. Clair,

Bloor, Wellesley, College and King Streets. The Eglinton-Bathurst business

area is also clearly indicated.

The densest"areas of generation can best be grouped into three maj or regions :

1) the entire business area served by the Yonge Street subway 2) a wide belt along Highway 401

3) the Etobicoke-Rexdale area

When a land use map of Toronto is superimposed on the orlgln density map it is

immediately apparent that it is the areas with heavy industry or low-income

housing which generate very few air passengers. Some of the major industrial

areas are New Toronto and Long Branch, the most northern part of Etobicoke,

Weston and south along the CNR tracks, the western section of Scarborough and

the waterfront area, especially from two miles west to two miles east of Yonge Street. High levels of passenger generation, on the other hand, occur at hotels, business office areas, manufacturing sectors, and high income residential areas.

The CNR railway line shown on the map is the most direct right-of-way to the airport from the downtown area. If there was enough demand for high-speed

access to the airport, this corridor could be used. At least once in the past, this CNR right-of-way has been included in a scheme for rapid airport access

but, the entire scheme was found to be economically unsound. Probably the

strongest argument against any new high speed connection to Downtown Toronto has

been that the airport buses already provide a high level of service to and from

the Royal York Hotel with 25 minute travel times and 15 minute headways. The pattern of passenger origins outside Metropoiitan Toronto is shown in

Figure 13. It can be seen immediately that the airport is well-located with

respect to the large st population centres in Southern Ontario that it serves.

Notice also how well the airport is situated with respect to the divided highway

system which serves these centres. It is these highways which make it so

convenient for the passengers to drive to the airport. In fact, many passengers from London even drive to Toronto to board a flight rather than use scheduled Air Canada connections from London airport to Toronto International Airport.

Figure 13 shows three major areas of passenger generation in So~thern Ontario: the Hamilton-Oakville-Cooksyille area, the Waterloo-Galt-Guelph area and the Oshawa-Ajax area. Hamilton is the largest single passenger generator outside Toronto

(3.9

percent of all passengers). The cluster of origins shown at Niagara Falls may be slightly anomalous - half of these passengers came on one chartered bus to the airport to board a flight as part of a package tour. No adjustment was made because it was felt that tour buses probably come occa-sionally to the Toronto airport from the Niagara Falls area.

The ori~in density map of Southern Ontario shows the region of influence of Toronto International Airport. Most of the passenger origins are contained in a circle with cen~re at the airport and a radius of 50 miies. Beyond this distance the influence of other airports is felt: to the south, Buffalo; to the west, London; to the north, North Bay; and to the east, Montreal.

SOME DETAILS OF THE PASS ENGER ORIGIN PATTERN Regions of Highest Generation of Passengers

The origin distribution maps (Figures 11 and 13) are useful for giving an impressio~ of air passenger generation density but they do not give a good idea of the proportion of travellers coming from particular regions in TorontD and Southern Ontario. In Figures 14 and 15, the major generation regions have been outlined and the percentage of all outbound passengers generated byeach of these regions during the survey week is indicated. Notice how the downtown area produces almost as many air travellers as the wide expanse along Highway 401.

The two maps also showarcs of distance away from the airport. Probably very few people are aware th at Oshawa is further away from the airport than Hamilton.

Because of the conflicting growths of both Toronto International Airport and the immediate surrounding area, airpor~ planners will probably have to select alocation for a second international airport for Toronto. Figures 14 and 15 show that, based on the passenger origin distribution alone, the new airport should be located north and west of Toronto. But other factors which must be given as much consideration as the passenger origin pattern are:

(1)

the air cargo origin distribution

(2) the terrain of the proposed site

(3) the cast of providing services to the sile

and most important

(4)

the economic impact which the new airport will have on the area selected

The new airport could probably be used to bolster the economy of an "under-developed" area.

Explanation of the High Generation of Air Passengers by Zone 1

The most remarkable feature of the passenger origin density map of Metro-politan Toronto is the large cluster of origins shown at the Royal York Hotel. The size of this cluster indicates that 7.9 percent of all locally boarding passengers at the Toronto airport are generated at the Royal York Hotel. One reaction was that this cluster may have resulted in part from passengers not

understanding the third question of the questionnaire. If, for example, a passenger had taken the subway from Bloor and Yonge Street to the Royal York Hotel, and then had taken the airport bus, it is possible that he might have

written down "Royal York Hotel" as his point of origin? When the questionnaires

were being tabulated and at the same time checked for Gonsistency, there was no indication that some of the passengers had answered the third question in-correctly. Nevertheless, an investigation was undertaken to see if the number of passengers shown originating at the Royal York was inordinately high.

Fortunately, the management at the Royal York does keep a record of how

the hotel registrants have come to Toronto. In the period from April to

Sep-tember 1968 the statistics showed that 44.8 percent of the registrants had

come by air. They also showed that the average number of registering passengers coming by air to Toronto during the months of May and June 1968 was 1931

passengers per week. This corresponds to a generation percentage by the Royal York Hotel of 5.4 percent. (Airline totals show that there were 35,878 local boardings at Toronto during the survey week. 1931/35,878 x 100% = 5.4%). But this 5.4 perce~t represents locally boarding passengers who had registered at the Royal York. It does not include passengers visiting b~siness associates

at the hotel during the day. This pro~ably explains in part the remaining 2.5

percent. Another source is probably businessmen who walk to the Royal York Hotel from the doWUtown office area in order to take the airport bus. One of the MTARTS reports shows that most downtown offices are within a half mile of the Royal York Hotel. Many high income executives are employed in this area,

and, as will be shown later in this report, they are the strongest source of business travel. The entire downtown zone (Zone 1) is responsible for the generation of 14.9 percent of all Toronto boarding passengers.

Generation of Passengers by Hotels

It was felt that a worthwhile exercise would be to see if there was a

relationship between the nurnber of rooms in a hotel and the nurnber of passengers which the survey indicated had originated at th at hotel.

4.

"Growth & Travel , Past & Present", MTARTS summary report nurnber 1,April 1966

No. of Surveyed

Hotel No. of Rooms Passengers Generated Surveyed Passengers/Room

Holiday Inn 200 7 .035

Skyline 353 14 .040

Inn on the Park 387 16 .041

Park Plaza 500 22 .044

Constellation 255 12 .047

Royal Mork 1600 87 .054

Totals 3295 158 .048

Notice how some hotels attract more air travellers on a per room basis than others. The Royal York Hotel has very good bus connections with the airport and good convention facilities. The Constellation Hotel is very close

to the airport. But it is risky to speculate further on the hotel-to-hotel variation because the survey results probably have relatively large

statis-tical errors at such a fine level.

Looking again at the table, by using the scale factor of 100/4.5 on the Metro Toronto map, (Figure 11), the number of passengers per week generated

by a single hotel room is .048 x 100/4.5 ~ 1.07 passengers per room, per week.

This means th at on an average basis, during the survey week a hotel of 1,000

rooms (provided it was of the same type as those listed) would have generated

about 1070 outbound air passengers. This factor of 1.07 is probably very dependent upon both the yearly air travel cycle (summer peaking) and the yearly hotel cycle (winter peaking).

Generation of Passengers by Six Selected Zones

The best way to understand the pattern of passenger orlglns is to try tb

mathematically relate the characteristics of the passengers generated.by a zone to the characteristics of that zone. By performing aregression analysis

it would be possible to construct a generation equation which would predict

the number of passengers generated by a zone, solely from the characteristics

of that zone. These characteristics would include zope population, zone

emp~oyment by type (e.g. industrial worker, manager, etcJ, zone income and

age characteristics and indexes of accessibility to the airport. By projecting

for each zone the population and land-use data to various target years, the

generation equation could then be used to forecast future passenger generation

by zone.

This technique would give airport planners an idea of future pass enger origin distributions. But most important, it would allow them to see whether high speed ground access systems should be planned for and if' so, what their location should beo

Unfortunately the analysis suggested above is beyond the scope of this

report. The air travel survey did, however, produce the input required for

the above study - a breakdown of passenger characteristics by zone.

Figures 18 to 23 give the characteristics of passengers originating in

zones 1, 16, 25, 104, 108 and 114 respectively. Similar outputs exist and

can be made available for each of the remaining zones.

Origin Pattern of the Residents and Non-residents

Non-residents tend to use different means of travel to the airport than the residents. The non-resident usually does not have an automobile at his disposal and must therefore use a taxi, limousine or an àirport bus.

Figure 16 gives the resident - non-resident origin pattern for Metropolitan Toronto. Zones having a predominance of non-residents usually have many hotels. On the other hand, the zones dominated by residents are predominantly

resi-dential areas.

Figure 17 gives the resident - non-resident orlgln pattern for the remaining part of Southern Ontario. Notice how most of the zones to the west of Toronto have a surplus of resident over non-resident originating passengers.

TRAVEL TIME TO THE AIRPORT

The third question of the questionnaire asked the passenger to specify his approximate travel time to the airport. The passengers' responses were usually given to the nearest

5

minutes. The average travel times as computed from the returned questionnaires are as follows:

Average Travel Time from eBD

32.6

minutes

~

Average Travel Time for Domestic Passengers

_39·7

_"

Average Travel Time for Transborder Passengers

_39·7

_"

Average Travel Time for International Passengers

₌

_57.3

"

Overall Average Travel Time (All Passengers;

42

.2

"

The accuracy of these average travel times depends upon each passenger's ability to either recall his travel time or be able to estimate it closely. Likely some passengers would overestimate and some would underestimate and the two effects would tend to cancel out each other.

The Airport Access study later in this report shows that it takes about

25

minutes to drive to the airport from the eBD under uncongested conditions. A t5me distribution study of pBD originating passengers (which is also included

later) shows that most of the passengers depart from the eBD in the afternoon and evening when the congestion is moderate. The average travel time of

32.6

minutes from the eBD, therefore seems reaso~able.

It is surprising that International passengers collectively take 17 minutes longer to reach the airport than do the remaining passengers. This indication that the International passenger has a broader origin distribution is supported by the next section which shows how prior knowledge of the passenger's

dest-ination can be used to predict his characteristics. EFFECT OF FLIGHT DESTINATION

Passengers flying to one destination collectively have different characteri-stics than passengers bound for another. This is clearly demonstrated when the survey results of the passengers are grouped according to the flight destination-domestic, transborder or international. A comparison of the more

importa~t passenger characteristics is made in the following table: COMPARISON OF DOMESTIC, TRANSBORDER AND INTERNATIONAL PASSENGERS

Domestic Transborder International Sex --Percent male Occupation Percent executive or professional Percent housewife Age Distribution Percent in predominant age group

(35-44

years) Percent 65 and over Annual Household Income

Percent under $5,000 Percent $15,000

&

over

76

55

I I 31 4

4

43

'l!-ravel Propensity During Past Year Percent made no trips 13 Percent made over 20 trips 21 Trip Purpose

Percent business Percent holidaying Percent visiting friends

&

relatives Re.sidence Percent resident in Southern Ontario Local Origin Percent from CBD Percent from outside

Metropolitan Toronto

Transferred from Another Flight Percent transferred

62

13 12

40

15 28

29

67

48

15

26

4

7

54

12 24

46

20 20

35

17

27

Transportation to the Airport (Local Boarders) Percent by private or

rented auto

Percent by taxi or limousine

Percent by bus

Percent by auto which was parked at the airport Number of Flights in Group

61

31

G

6

28

40

14

58

33

7

17

36

33

22 21 10

9

34

42

7

18

48

18

7

44

22

67

16

15 12 I I Survey Average 70 50

14

28

5

6

45

17

20 50 20

16

39 15 30

25

61

31 7 21

87

The Domestic Passenger

~he major Canadian destination of the Toronto air traveller are Montreal,

ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Montreal has a very strong attractive

in-fluence on Toronto businessmen. There are several Montreal flights each morning and the proportion of executives on board is as high as 80 percent. The proportion of business-oriented trips being made is of ten as high as 95

percent! Practically all passengers on these early flights are local residents.

The table shows that the domestic passenger is very likely male, that he is also very likely to be an executive and travelling on business. The age distribution is strongly peaked in the

35

to

44

years category. This further

contributes to the image that comes through •.••••. the well-paid, (young) b\1sinessman.

Transportation to the airport is ustlally provided by private auto and very

of ten it is left parked at the airport. (Results were also compiled for each

individual destination. They showed that as the destination became further and further away from Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver for example, the prop

-ortion of private cars parked at the airport became less and less).

Relatively few of the domestic travellers are going to Canadian destinations

on holidays or to visit friends or relatives.

The Transborder Passenger

As might be expected, the characteristics of the transborder passenger are

quite similar to those of the domestic passenger. The most popular American

destinations are New York, Cleveland and Chicago. One major difference, however, is that about half of the transborder fliers are American citizens

and this is reflected in the higher income distribution shown

(54

percent of

the transoorder passengers are in a family making over $15,000 a year).

Another characteristic is that the transborder flier tends to be a well

-travelled individual (24 percent of them made over 20 trips during the past year) •

The~e is less of a business orientation to trips made by the United States -bound passenger. More of these passengers are holidaying or visiting friends than is the case with domestic passengers. This is also paralleled by a lower

percentage of men and a higher proportion of housewives than on the Canadian

flights.

It is more difficult to make generalizations about the transborder passen-ger than it is with the domestic passenpassen-ger because the mix of trip purposes

is much greater. Although there are early morning executive flights to New

York and Chicago, there are also a few holiday flights to Miami and Tampa.

In addition there tend to be individual flights which are very heterogeneous with respect to trip purpose.

The International Passenger

Of the three passenger types, the overseas or international travellers seem to have the most distinctive characteristics. The main areas attracting these passengers are Britain and the European continent, but the flight sample also included Jamaica, Barbados and Mexico City fu~ong the destinations.

Overseas flights even at the end of May carry large numbers of tourists and holidayers - two thirds of the passengers were either on holidays, or visiting friends or relatives. The men on board were accompanied by an almost equal

number of women

(46

percent). Housewives evidently made ~p a large portion

of the passengers (22 percent).

The age distribution of the international passenger was ~ess peaked than

the domestic and transborder distributions, and it spread more into the higher

age brackets.

(10

percent of the passengers were over

65).

In view of the age distribution and the lower proportion of executives, it is not surprising that the income distribution was displaced towards the lower end of the scale. (9 percent have a family income of less than

$5,000

per year and only

34

percent have an annual family income of greater than

$15,000).

The most remarkable observation regarding the international flier is his relative inexperience with air travel - 42 percent of the overseas passengers had not flown at all during the past year and only

7

percent had flown more than 20 times during the same periode

Another very distinct feature is that the local orlgln distribution for the long-distance passengers is spread more uniformly and widely than it is

for short-range passengers -

44

percent come from outside Metropolitan Toronto

and omly

7

percent come from the downtown sector. More use is made of the private auto and less use made of the taxi and limousine. The relatively

high useof the public bus

(15

percent) is probably best explained by the

presence of large numbers of lower income passengers.

The value of this comparison of the three fligh~ categories, aside from

its ac.ademic or educational usefulness is twofold. First, it makes it possible

to understand what will happen to the overall characteristics and origin patterns of the Toronto air travelLer if the proportion of domestic,

trans-border and international passengers changes. Second, it demonstrates the

importance of designing the sprvey flight sample properly. To be truly

rep-resentative, the survey sample should include domestic, transborder and international passengers in their true proportion, that is, in the same pro-portion as they occur in the universe being samplede

HOW PASSENGER CHARACTERISTICS CHANGE FROM DAY TO DAY DURING THE WEEK Although the survey was not designed specifically for comparing the characteristics of passengers from one time period to the next,the cycles at work during a one week period are so strong th at it was felt watteful not to describe them.

Actually the entire survey flight sample was selected by choosing a random

flight sample for each day. But because the sample for each day included only

about 12 flights, the proportion of Canadian, American and overseas flights was sometimes slightly out of balance. The spacing 0f the flights with respect to time of day, however, was usually very good as Figure 24 shows.

The following figure (Figure 25) illustrates for each survey day both the number of passengers enplaned and the proportion of these passengers who re-turned a useable questionnaire. For many airport; Sunday is the busiest day.

Toronto International Airport is no exception.

Business-oriented air travel peaks du~ing the week and tapers off to a minimum on Saturday and Sunday. A person is more likely to meet a financial

tycoon on a Tuesday or Wednesday flight than a week-end flight. This weekly business cycle has a profound effect on other variables - they follow almost

precisely the day to day trend of the business cycle. This effect is best appreciated by examining a table showing the passenger characteristics for each day of the week:

PASS ENGER CHARACTERISTICS BY DAY

Of

WEEK

Percent business Sex,O-Ç!cupation Percent male Mon. 27th 57 76 Percent executive, managerial 44 Percent, house-wife 16 Age Distribution Predominant age Tues. 28th 70 81

9

Wed. 29th 67 80 10 groups (years) 35-44 35-44 35-44 Percent in above group ₃₃ 35 32

Travel Propensity During Past Year

Percent made no trips Percent made over 20 trips Trip Purpose Percent holiday-ing or visiting friends and relatives Local Origin Percent from 10 25 30 wi thin Metro-po1itan Toronto 76 Percent from CBD 13 Transportation to Percent by auto Percent by auto

which was parked

at the airport 22 Percent by taxi or limousine 29 Percent by bus 5 Percent resident 45 Percent trans-ferred 20

8

28 19 78 17 26 30

7

40 17 10 28 21 70 16 36 28

5

50 16 Thurs 0 30th 50 71 46 13 Fri. 31st 43 68 39 15 Sat. lst 30 58 26 17 Sun. 2nd 42 60 33 13 35-44 35-44 45-54 45-54 32 18 19 33 72 12 22 32

5

39 35 25 17 16 77 19 17 36

7

33 30 23 26 13 53 67 12 63 13 30

6

32 24 26 13 50

9

57 17 26 14 42 26 Survey Average 50 70 42 14 35-44 28 17 20 36 70 15 61 21 31

7

39 25

A graph of a few of these variables is shown in Figure

26.

Just

the vari-ables which vary directly as the percent business have been shown. Other variables such as "percent holidaying or visiting", "percent housewife" or

"percent made no trips" all have an inverse relationship with "percent business" i.e., their plots are almost a mirror image of the curves shown.

The results of this section could be of value to airline operations de-partments. When deciding flight times it is very important to know what time most passengers would like a flight to go to a given destination. If the flight time is not conveniant, a passenger may choose either to go by rail if the destination is not too far away or not to go at all. Usually if the pas se-nger is travelling on business he will prefer to fly either early in the morn-ing or late in the afternoon. Passëngers on holidays are more likely to pre-fer the late morning or the evening for their flight.

HOW PASSENGER CHARACTERISTICS CHANGE FROM HOUR TO HOUR DURlID THE DAY

Although the flight sample was stratified by day of the week it was not, strictly speaking, stratified by hour of the day. Figure 24 shows that there are some gaps: from about 1 to 2 pm., from

4

to

5

pm. and from about 9:30 to 10:}0 pm. The gap from

4

to

5

pm. is much less realistic than the other two. But the sample does reflect the morning and evening travel peaks.

The problem with taking all the sampled flights and trying to get a cross-section of passenger characteristics with respect to time of day is that in the sample, there was an average of only

5

flights per hour across the week. Hence, the passenger characteristics during any particular hour depended very much upon the character of the sample flights of that hour. Therefore, only a few of the passenger characteristics were plotted - those which showed de-finite trends: percent business, percent transferred and percent resident

(of the local boarders only). These are shown in Figure 27.

The percent transferred has a definite upward trend with hour of the day. Early in the morning there are very few passengers on incoming flights to transfer to outbound flights. As the number of passengers in the airport increases there is a tendency for a larger and larger proportion of the out-bound passengers to be transferring.

The percentage of locally boarding passengers who are Toronto area resi-dents tends to decrease with time of day. The graph shows that Toronto area residents are most likely to take an outbound flight either first thing in the morning or late in the evening. The non-residents, on the other hand, are more likely to choose a mid-day flight for their return home.

The daytime business cycle displays two peaks - one in the morning and

one in the evening. Holiday flights of ten depart in the late morning or in the evening between 8:00 and 9:00 pm. This is probably the cause of the two depressions in the curve. The shape of the percent business curve is pIObably

the result of the flight time preference of businessmen and the time of holi. day flights as scheduled by the airlines.

DISTRIBUTION OF ZONE 1 ORIGINATING PASSENGERS BY FLIGHT DEPARTURE TIME

The distribution of Zone 1 passengers by flight time shows that afternoon and evening flights are preferred by this group. Figure 28 gives the

time - passenger profile produced by the survey. (Unfortunately the survey

did not cover flights at the hour of 1 pm tr

4

pm. This explains why no

passen-gers are shown for these two hours). Because many of the passengers are

non-residents living in hotels, one might have expected that most of the Zone 1 passengers would depart in the mornings or early afternoon. But because

check-out time is usually either 3:00 pm or 4:00 pm at the large downtown Toronto hotels, businessmen can get almost a full day's work done before departing for the airport.

EFFECT OF INCOME

The survey results have already shown that a large proportion of Toronto

air travellers come from high income families. It is also instructive to see

how the characteristics of Toronto travellers vary from one income group to

another:

PASS ENGER CHARACTERISTICS BY INCOME GROUP

Percent business Sex Percent male Occupation Percent executive, professional Percent housewife A~e Distribution

Predominant· age group (years)

Percent in above

group

Percent 65

&

over

under ~52000 24 36 11 21 25-34 23 20

Travel Propensity During Past Percent ma~e no trips 39

Percent made over 20

trips 8

Trip Purpose

Percent holidaying or visiting friends and

relatives 63

Local Origin

Percent from outside

Metropölitan Toronto 32

Annual Household Income

$5,000 to ~9,999 Year 37 63 30 14 25-34 25 5 33 4 50 43 19 $10,000 to ~14 229'2 65 82 56

8

35-44 30 2 12 18 21 28 $15,000 & over 65 81 72 11 35-44 35 2 5 34 22 23 Survey Average 50 70 50 14 35-44 28 5 17 20 36 30

Annual Household Income

under

$5,000

$10,000

$15,000

Survey

$5,000

to

$9,999

to

$14,O99

&

over Average Trans' ortation to the Airport Local Boarder s

Percent by auto

7

57

59

61

61

Percent by auto which was parked at the

airport

11

17

23

25

21

Percent by taxi or

limousine

₃₇

28

31

33

31

Percent by bus

14

13

7

4

7

SIZE OF INCOME GROUFS:

6%

21%

28%

45%

Passengers of the highest income bracket are almost three times more likely to be flying on business than the passengers with an annual family

income of less than

$5,000.

As income decreases it becomes more and more likely that the passenger is female.

The age distribution has a stronger peak as income increases. Also, the peak shifts from the

25

to

34

year age bracket to the

35

to

44

year age bracket.

Thirty-four percent of the highest income passengers made over

20

trips during the past year and

39

percent of the lowest income group had not travel-led at all during the previous year.

High income passengers who are most likely to live in Metropolitan Toronto if they reside in Southern·Ontario, have strong tendencies to use a car to get to the airport and to park the car at the airport for the duration of their trip. Low income passengers, on the other hand, still make use of cars the most but are much more likely to use taxis, limousines or buses to get to the airport than their fellow travellers in the higher economie brackets.

IV: A DESCRIPTION OF GROUND ACCESS TO TORONTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (November,

1968)

Air travellers who use Toronto International Airport are fortunate in' having good grovnd access to all parts of the city. This is chiefly because the airport is located very conveniently with respect to both north-south and east-west elements of the Toronto grid of expressways. These expressways are

vital to the collection and distribution of Toronto's air passengers because virtually all ground traffic comes to the airport by road.

A driving study was made to determine how much time was required to drive from all points in Metropolitan Toronto to the airport under conditions of average daytime congestion. The study was carried out by driving a car at the posted speed limit during the qff-peak hours of November l~,

1968.

Where traffic lights influenced the driving time at least two runs were made and an

average travel time was taken.

Figure

29

gives the results of the driving study and shows the travel time contours for the Metropolitan Toronto area (uncongested conditions). Most parts

of the city are less than 25 minutes away from the airport. The Toronto business district is a little more than 20 minutes away from the airport. (Airline bus service from the Royal York Hotel takes a minimum of about 23 minutes during the off-peak periods).

Notice the spike formed by the 25 minute contour, penetrating the downtown area. This spike would be virtually eliminated by the proposed Richview 'and Crosstown expressways. These expressways would provide high-speed access from the Bloor-Yonge Street area directly to the airport.

The spacing of the driving-time contours shown in Figure 29 is directly dependent upon the degree of road congestion - this is particularly true in the downtown areas. (According to Air Terminal Transport bus drivers, therush-hour driving time from the Royal York Hotel to the airport is usually less than 35 minutes, but sometimes 45 minutes is required). For many parts of the city, rush-hour eongestion doubles the time required to drive to the airpDrt. Uniform congestion in Toronto would cause the driving time contours to group closer to-gether about the airport, and also cause more contours to appear on the map.

The unfortunate aspect of Toronto's airport access system is that the peak periods of airport useage coincide with the periods of Toronto rush-hour traffic

(7 to 9 am and 4 to 6 pm). Of the two rush-hour periods, the evening period at the airport is the worse. This leads to rather intolerable conditions during the summer when the use of the air terminal is at a peak. The air passenger must fight his way to the airport and then spend much time looking for a place to park.

A passenger can get to or from the Toronto airport in any one of the following ways: (1) private automobile which may be parked at the airport (2) rented automobile

(3)

airline limousine

(4)

airline bus

(5)

taxi (available to the airport only - taxis are not allowed to pick up passengers unless auth-orized by Airline Terminal Transport) (6) TTC express bus connecting from the Bloor subway at Islington, and (7) local ~TC bus. A description of each of these services follows:

(1) Private Aptomobile

Parking space is relatively inexpensive at the airport. The parking available is (a) long term within the terminal complex at $2.00 per day

(b) short term parking (up to 2 hOurs) within the terminal complex at 25~ per hour

(c) meter parking within the terminal complex at 25~ per half hour

(d) reduced rate parking at an outdoor parking lot at $1.00 per day

A mini-bus connects the reduced rate parking lot to the airport. This free service is run at five minute intervals and of ten makes it faster as well as cheaper than parking at any of the other parking lots.

(2) Rented Automobile

These are available at the airport from several agencies at competitive