See inside the just-opened Toronto island airport tunnel that burrows 30 metres under Lake Ontario

Richard Warnica | July 30, 2015 | Last Updated: Jul 30 3:24 PM ET, Source

Media and special guests get a first look at the tunnel to Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Thursday July 30, 2015. The new link to the island airport officially opens to the public on Thursday.

A long-touted fixed link between Toronto’s oft-controversial island airport and the downtown mainland opened to the public on Thursday, more than a year after it was originally scheduled for completion.

The 260-metre underground pedestrian tunnel cost $82.5 million to build, funded through airport improvement fees, and will augment, rather than replace, the existing ferry service.

Passengers arriving at what’s officially known as the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport now have the option of taking one of six elevators down more than 30 metres below the surface of Lake Ontario. Once there, they can cross the tunnel on automated sidewalks that travel at a speed of 2.3 km an hour before heading up into the airport terminal using what Ports Toronto describes as “one of the longest escalator systems in Canada.”

The tunnel, like all aspects of the airport, has long caused political controversy in Toronto. It was approved by city council in 2011 over the objections of virtually the entire downtown Toronto caucus.

Porter Airlines, the airport’s anchor tenant, wants to expand the facility to allow for jet traffic, a proposal deeply opposed by many of those same downtown councillors. The airport already serves 2.4 million passengers a year, with direct service to 20 cities in Canada and the U.S. The expansion could lift the number of annual passengers to more than five million a year, according to one analysis.

The airport tunnel was originally supposed to open as early as the first part of 2014. But obstacles, including an unexpectedly cold winter, contaminated soil and the legacy of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King all caused construction delays.

A source told the National Post’s Peter Kuitenbrouwer last year that excavators working on this tunnel were delayed when they slammed into the remnants of an earlier, incomplete tunnel started in 1935 and cancelled when King became prime minister.