Along-promised hovercraft routecould be a step closer to ferrying passengers from downtown Toronto to the picturesque Niagara Region at ultra-high speeds.

Hoverlink Ontario Inc. made a splash in September 2022 when the start-up announced that it expected its new service linking Ontario Place in Toronto with Port Weller, St. Catharines to be operational for summer 2023.

The company talked a big game with its announcement that it was in the final stages of approval for the new service, which promised 30-minute travel times across Lake Ontario that would shave upwards of an hour off of commutes between Toronto and Niagara.

August 2023 is now drawing to a close, and Hoverlink would have to pull off a miracle in planning to meet the hyped-up Summer start of service announced a year earlier.

However, the new hovercraft link might be closer to reality than the radio silence would indicate, according to St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe.

Siscoe attended the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference last week, and wasquoted in the St. Catharines Standardsaying that provincial officials have shown strong interest in the Hoverlink plan.

The St. Catharines mayor met with Associate Minister of Transportation Stan Cho and Minister of Infrastructure Kinga Surma during the recent conference in London, and reports that the officials were "very enthusiastic about the project" as a "viable way to get people off of the highway."

As for the project's future, Siscoe states that he is "cautiously optimistic that it's moving forward."

The Hoverlink website has not yet been updated with a new projected timeline for opening, though it is pretty apparent that passengers won't be gliding over the lake at high speeds this summer as previously announced.

Even once Hoverlink's approvals are in place, the route's terminals in St. Catharines and Toronto must be built before any revenue service can run between the two cities.

The Toronto-side terminal is planned to be constructed at Ontario Place, itself a site currently in flux, while the St. Catharines terminal is planned — but yet to begin construction — at the entrance to the Welland Canal on vacant land in the Port Weller area.

Hoverlink promises a year-round service using all-weather craft with climate-controlled cabins holding up to 180 passengers.

Advertised as less noisy than a dishwasher, the eco-friendly and weatherproof hovercraft vehicles will each be able to make up 48 lake crossings per day, adding up to a maximum capacity of 8,640 passengers per hovercraft, per day, or more than three million passengers per year.

Despite the optimism of some like Siscoe, Hoverlink follows a procession of failed high-speed ferry services across Lake Ontario. Perhaps the most notable failure was theill-fated attempt to connect Toronto and Rochester, NY, via a catamaran ferry route.

Terminals for that route were indeed constructed, though the demand never lived up to expectations. The route was ultimately scrapped, and the enormous Spirit of Ontario I ferry was sold off.

Other recent attempts that have either gone quiet or failed to pan out include apush to link various GTA municipalities via ferry, andan earlier cross-lake ferry line.