Pearson Airport to the University of Toronto

How do I get from Pearson to the University of Toronto?

The public alternative for St. George is the UP Express to Union Station and the subway north to St. George or Queen's Park, which works well for a student with a backpack and badly for a student with two suitcases, a duvet and a desk lamp on the first day of term. For Mississauga and Scarborough there is no rail option at all: the MiWay and TTC buses take over an hour with a change, and a taxi is a metered gamble on the 401. The chauffeur is the version where the fare is known, the vehicle is sized to the luggage and the car stops at the residence door rather than the nearest bus loop.

St. George: the colleges and their doors

The downtown campus fills the blocks between Bloor, Spadina, College and Bay, and each college has its own residence entrance the chauffeur knows: Chestnut Residence on Chestnut Street south of Dundas, which has a proper drive; New College on Willcocks and Huron; Innis on Sussex Avenue; Trinity's Devonshire Place doors; Victoria's Charles Street and Burwash quads off Bloor; St. Michael's on St. Joseph Street; University College on King's College Circle itself, where stopping is a two-minute unloading window; Woodsworth on Bloor at St. George; and Knox and the graduate houses scattered west of Spadina. The Circle is closed to traffic on convocation days and during the September street fair, and the chauffeur plans the approach — from Hoskin Avenue, from Wellesley, from Harbord — accordingly. Students living off-campus in the Annex, Kensington, Harbord Village or the new towers on Bay and College are an ordinary downtown address and price the same as the downtown route.

Mississauga and Scarborough: the campuses the trains do not reach

U of T Mississauga sits on Mississauga Road between Dundas and Burnhamthorpe, on the Credit River with a deer population that surprises new arrivals; the residences — Oscar Peterson Hall, Erindale Hall, Roy Ivor Hall and the townhouses — have a drive at Residence Road and the chauffeur delivers to the door. From Pearson it is the 401 west two exits and Mississauga Road south, twenty minutes at most hours, which makes it the cheapest campus transfer in the province and the one most parents combine with a grocery stop at the Erin Mills Town Centre on the way. U of T Scarborough on Military Trail at Ellesmere is the long one: 401 east through the collector lanes past the Allen, the DVP, the 404 and Kennedy, then south on Morningside or Military Trail — fifty minutes at 2 pm, seventy at 5 pm. Its residences are the townhouse village behind the campus and the new Harmony Commons, both with a drive.

The student calendar and the drives it makes

Term starts the Tuesday after Labour Day and move-in runs the weekend before, when every residence has a schedule of arrival slots and a line of family cars. International students arrive earlier — the last week of August for orientation — and their first Pearson arrival is the trip this page is really about: a student who has never seen the city, landing from Delhi, Shanghai, Lagos or São Paulo after a long-haul, with two 23-kilogram bags and a carry-on, whose parents booked the car from overseas with the flight number and the residence address, and who is met at the door of the arrivals hall by a chauffeur holding their name. The pickup page explains the meeting points; the accessible and family page covers the extra luggage and the extra time we allow. The same trip repeats at reading week in February, at the end of exams in late April when the residence closes and the bags go to storage or to the airport, and at convocation in June, when parents arrive for the ceremony at Convocation Hall on King's College Circle and stay at the hotels on Bloor or in Yorkville.

Parents, visits and convocation

A parent's visit is usually a long weekend: arrival Friday evening to a hotel within walking distance of the campus — the Park Hyatt at Bloor and Avenue Road, the Chelsea on Gerrard, the Holiday Inn on Bloor at Avenue Road, or the Kimpton on Yonge — a Saturday with the student, and the Sunday flight home. The Friday arrival and the Sunday departure are two fixed fares on one confirmation; the Saturday, if the family wants to see the city, is a chauffeured half-day — the ROM and the AGO, the CN Tower, the Distillery District, a drive up to the Scarborough Bluffs — with the student picked up at the residence on the way. Convocation week in June brings the largest version of this: grandparents from overseas, the SUV or Sprinter for a party of six with the graduate's belongings for the flight home, and the photograph in front of University College with the chauffeur waiting on Hoskin Avenue.

From the campus: the city, the stations and the working day

U of T's St. George campus is a ten-minute walk from Union Station and Yorkville, which makes it a base as much as a destination. The chauffeur is the connection to the parts of the city and the province the subway does not reach: a day trip to Niagara Falls for a visiting family, a Sunday drive to the Muskoka lakes, the Toronto Zoo or Canada's Wonderland for a student's younger siblings, and the airport run to Billy Bishop for a family flying on to Montréal. The hourly chauffeur serves the university's professional side too: a visiting professor delivered from a Bloor Street hotel to a morning lecture, then to a meeting at MaRS on College, then to a dinner on Harbord Street; a delegation from a partner university on a day of meetings across the three campuses; a recruiter with interviews at the Rotman School on St. George Street and at the Schulich School across the city at York. All are booked by the hour with a three-hour minimum on the corporate account and invoiced monthly.

Departures: the flight home

The reverse trip is planned backwards from the flight: pickup at the residence door at the time that reaches the correct terminal ninety minutes before a domestic departure and two and a half to three hours before an international one, with the terminal finder confirming which. The end-of-term departure is the heavy one — a year's belongings in the boot, sometimes a bicycle — and the vehicle is sized for it at booking. Students flying home for the winter break in December leave in the week before Christmas, when the Gardiner is at its worst and the chauffeur builds the extra time in; the departures page explains the check-in cut-offs and the traffic buffers by hour and by season.

What the fare includes

The fare from Pearson to any U of T campus is fixed by vehicle class for the residence address and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, tolls, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area and the included waiting — sixty minutes on international arrivals, thirty on domestic — with the flight tracked so a delay moves the pickup rather than costing the car. Meet and greet inside the arrivals hall with a name board is the one paid add-on; gratuity is never added; a cancellation before the chauffeur is dispatched is free. Parents overseas can book and pay in their own currency through the reservation engine and receive the confirmation and the chauffeur's details by email and WhatsApp.

Graduate students, exchange terms and the mid-year arrival

Not every U of T arrival is a first-year in September. Graduate students arrive for January intakes, exchange students for a single term, postdocs and visiting scholars for a year with a family, and the summer research programmes bring undergraduates from partner universities for ten weeks in May. These are the quiet-season arrivals — no marshalled move-in, no arrival window — and they are often the ones where the address is not a residence at all but a Graduate House room on Harbord Street, a family-housing unit at Charles Street, a sublet in the Annex found on a listing site, or a hotel for the first week while an apartment is found. The chauffeur handles all of them the same way: the address on the booking, the flight tracked, the luggage sized at booking, and — for a family with small children arriving from overseas — the child seats fitted before the pickup. A visiting scholar's family that arrives in January, when the city is at its coldest and the light has gone by 5 pm, is the arrival where meet and greet inside the hall earns its price most clearly.

The airport and the rail station: U of T's two gateways

U of T is unusual in having both Pearson and Union Station within easy reach, and a chauffeured trip is often the connection between them. A student flying into Pearson and continuing to Kingston, Montréal or Ottawa by VIA Rail books the airport-to-Union transfer as a fixed downtown fare and boards with the luggage at the Front Street door; a parent arriving at Union by train from Ottawa for convocation books the reverse. Billy Bishop airport on the island is fifteen minutes from the campus and the right departure for Montréal, Ottawa, Halifax and the US north-east on Porter, with the Billy Bishop page covering the tunnel and the timing. And the campus's own hospitals along University Avenue — Toronto General, Mount Sinai, Princess Margaret, SickKids — bring patients and visiting physicians on the same fixed fare, with the extra care a medical trip needs.

Book Pearson to the University of Toronto