Pearson Airport to York University

How far is York University from Pearson Airport?

The subway reaches York University station on Line 1 — but from Pearson that means the UP Express to Union, the whole of Line 1 north through the city and a walk from the station across the Common with the luggage, about ninety minutes. The 900 Airport Express bus runs from Terminal 1 to Kipling station, then the subway; the same problem, a different order. A student with a backpack does either happily; a family with the contents of a residence room does not. The chauffeur is twenty-five minutes door to door and the fare is known before the flight leaves.

Keele campus: the residences and where the car stops

The Keele campus is large enough to have its own road network, and the residence doors are spread across it. The undergraduate residences — Founders, Vanier, Winters, Stong, Bethune and Calumet — sit around their colleges on the west and south of the campus with drop-off lay-bys on the ring road; Pond Road Residence and Tatham Hall are on the south edge with a drive at The Pond Road; the Quad on Ian Macdonald Boulevard is the newer apartment-style block with an entrance loop; the Village on the north side of the campus across Steeles is the private student-housing neighbourhood, an ordinary address with a driveway. The chauffeur knows which lay-by belongs to which college, which matters at move-in when the ring road is one-way and marshalled. Students living in the towers along Keele or in the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre condos across the 407 are an ordinary address too.

Glendon: the other campus

Glendon College is York's bilingual liberal-arts campus on a wooded estate on Bayview Avenue at Lawrence — a different world from Keele, and a different drive: 401 east to Bayview, south past the Bridle Path to the campus gates, thirty-five to forty-five minutes. Its residences, Hilliard and Wood, are inside the estate with a drive at the manor house, and the chauffeur enters at the main gate on Bayview. Glendon students moving between the two campuses — a class at Keele, a residence at Glendon — are a forty-minute drive across the top of the city, which the hourly booking covers when the shuttle bus schedule does not.

Move-in, orientation and the first arrival

York's move-in runs the weekend before Labour Day with assigned arrival windows per residence, and the ring road becomes a marshalled queue of family cars with volunteers in T-shirts directing traffic to the college lay-bys. A chauffeured arrival joins the same queue and is treated the same way; the advantage is the vehicle — the SUV or Sprinter sized for the load at booking — and the chauffeur who has done the queue before and knows which entrance to use for which college. International students arriving in the last week of August for orientation are the other move-in: a single student off a long-haul with two large cases, met with the name board inside Terminal 1 or 3 and delivered to the residence check-in desk, with the pickup page explaining the meeting point and the family and accessible page the luggage allowance. The reverse trips are reading week, the end of April and December.

Schulich, Osgoode and the professional visitor

York's Schulich School of Business and Osgoode Hall Law School bring a steady traffic of visitors who are not students: executives on the Schulich executive-education programmes staying at the hotels on the airport strip or at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, visiting faculty, recruiters running interview days, and the guest speakers at the Schulich building on the Keele campus's east side. These are corporate bookings: the airport arrival, a standing hotel-to-campus car for the week, the hourly chauffeur for a day of meetings that runs from the campus to a downtown office and back, and the departure timed to the flight, invoiced monthly through the corporate account. The campus's proximity to Pearson is the point: a 7 am flight is a 6 am pickup, not a 4.30 one.

From the campus: the city, Vaughan and the north

Keele is on the northern edge of Toronto, which makes it a starting point for the north as much as for the city. Canada's Wonderland is ten minutes up the 400 — the attractions page covers it — and the Vaughan Mills outlet mall is beside it; the Muskoka lakes are ninety minutes for a family weekend; Black Creek Pioneer Village is on the campus's doorstep. Downtown is forty minutes by car or fifty by subway, and a family visiting for the weekend books the chauffeured day for the CN Tower, the Distillery District and the waterfront rather than the Line 1 marathon. The Aviva Centre beside the campus hosts the National Bank Open tennis each August, and the Toronto Track and Field Centre and the Lions Stadium host events through the year; a chauffeured evening to any of them is on the event page.

Departures and what the fare includes

The departure is planned backwards from the flight — pickup at the residence at the time that reaches the terminal ninety minutes before a domestic flight and two and a half hours before an international one — and the short distance is the reason York students fly on early flights without dread. The fare is fixed by vehicle class for the campus address and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, the 407 toll, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area and the included waiting; meet and greet is the paid add-on; gratuity is never added. The departures page has the check-in cut-offs by airline and terminal.

Winter arrivals and the January intake

York's January intake and the return from the winter break in the first week of January put the campus transfer into the hardest weather of the year: the 407 is plowed first and the 427 second, but a landing at Pearson in a snow squall with the temperature at minus fifteen is an arrival where the twenty-five minutes matter more than in September. The chauffeur reads Ontario 511 before leaving, the vehicles run winter tyres, and the residence door is reached on the first attempt because the chauffeur knows the ring road under snow. Students returning from Christmas at home in Vancouver, Calgary, Mumbai or Lagos land into this, and the fixed fare and the tracked flight are the reason the trip is routine rather than a scramble at the taxi rank.

Graduate students, the Village and the family arrival

York's graduate residences and family housing on the Keele campus — Passy Gardens, the Atkinson apartments, the townhouses on the Assiniboine Road side — and the private towers of the Village across Steeles bring a different arrival: a graduate student with a partner and a child, a year's luggage, and a rented apartment whose keys are collected from a housing office that closes at 4.30. The booking carries both addresses, the chauffeur waits at the office while the keys are issued, and the child seats are fitted before the pickup. The same trip in reverse — a family flying home at the end of a two-year master's with more luggage than they arrived with — is the Sprinter to Pearson at 5 am, and the reason York's proximity to the airport is the campus's quiet advantage.

Sport, the Aviva Centre and the summer campus

The Keele campus is a sports venue as much as a university: the Aviva Centre hosts the National Bank Open tennis tournament each August, when players, officials and broadcasters arrive at Pearson for two weeks and the campus hotels and the airport-strip hotels fill; the Toronto Track and Field Centre and the Lions Stadium host championships through the summer; and the summer camps and the international summer schools fill the residences between May and August. Each brings its own airport traffic — the tennis credential-holders on a standing corporate account, the camp families on a Sunday afternoon, the summer-school groups on the Sprinter — and all price as the same Keele campus fare.

Book Pearson to York University