Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Owner/Operator: PortsToronto

How HGC Delivered Airport Noise Monitoring and Community Noise Assessment for Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport

Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, commonly known as the Toronto Island Airport, is ranked as Canada’s ninth busiest airport offering service to more than 20 cities in Canada and the U.S and welcomes 2.5 million travelers each year. The airport, with one passenger terminal, is used for general aviation services, including medical emergency flights (due to its proximity to downtown hospitals), small charter flights, and private aviation. With the exception of air ambulance flights, jet aircraft are banned from the airport.

Airport Noise Level Monitoring

HGC was retained to address airport noise generation issues and community concerns. We created a community noise model of the general airport operating area that compared aircraft noise to other existing background noise in the general environment, and then assessed the cumulative impact of noise from these various sources, including aircrafts. This involved populating the noise model with traffic data from nearby major roadways, rail lines, incorporating topographical data (elevation contours) and larger buildings and built up areas. Aircraft noise contours were then superimposed onto this community noise model. This information was then used to determine current compliance of the airport with the Canadian air traffic noise limits.

Acoustical consulting services delivered:

• Conducted automated and attended monitoring of sound levels in the community to capture flyover events
• Correlated sound from flyover events with information about flight paths and aircraft type
• Identified sound events unrelated to flyovers at the airport site