Limo service in Toronto

The country's largest chauffeur market

Toronto books more chauffeured cars than the rest of Canada combined, and for reasons the city makes obvious on any weekday afternoon: the 401 is the busiest highway in North America, the Gardiner closes for repairs every summer, Pearson is the country's largest airport and Bay Street is its financial capital. A pre-booked car with a fixed fare is not a luxury here so much as the only way to know when you will arrive and what it will cost. We run the full service across the Greater Toronto Area - the 416 and the 905 - from the Pearson and Billy Bishop transfers that are the bulk of the work, through corporate accounts on Bay Street and in the Mississauga head offices, to the weddings, proms and nights out that fill the stretch limousines on summer Saturdays.

Two airports, two different pickups

Pearson (YYZ) is twenty-seven kilometres north-west of downtown in Mississauga, thirty minutes off-peak on the 427 and the Gardiner or the 401 and the DVP, and an hour in the evening rush. Terminal 1 takes Air Canada and Star Alliance; Terminal 3 most other carriers. The pre-arranged limousine curb is on the arrivals level of each terminal, separate from the taxi rank and the ride-app doors, and the chauffeur texts the curb and the plate before landing; meet and greet inside the hall is the add-on. Sixty minutes of waiting are included on an international arrival, thirty on domestic. The Pearson page has the full guide.

Billy Bishop (YTZ) is on the island at the foot of Bathurst Street, reached by the pedestrian tunnel or the short ferry, and it is Porter's hub for the Ottawa, Montreal, Boston and New York shuttles. The chauffeur meets you at the mainland pickup on Eireann Quay; downtown is ten minutes, the Financial District five. It is the airport Bay Street prefers for the short hops, and the corporate account usually has both airports on the profile.

The districts we drive to most

The Financial District - the bank towers between Front and Queen along Bay - is the destination for most weekday airport transfers and the origin for most hourly days. King West and the Entertainment District for the restaurants, the Mirvish theatres and the clubs; Yorkville for the hotels, the shopping and the Four Seasons; the Distillery District and the St. Lawrence Market for the weekend; Liberty Village and Queen West for the agencies and the studios; the University Avenue hospital corridor for the medical days; Midtown at Yonge and Eglinton, North York at Yonge and Sheppard, and the Scarborough and Etobicoke suburbs for the residential pickups. Across the 905 the Mississauga page covers the airport corridor, and Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Brampton and Oakville price on the same engine.

Venues and the calendar

The Scotiabank Arena for the Leafs, the Raptors and the concerts; the Rogers Centre for the Jays; BMO Field for Toronto FC and the Argonauts; the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and the Enercare Centre for the shows; Roy Thomson Hall, the Four Seasons Centre and the Mirvish houses for the arts; Casa Loma, the ROM and the AGO for the visitors. The calendar is relentless: the AutoShow in February, PDAC in March when the mining world fills every hotel, the Canadian Open golf in June, Pride at the end of June, the Honda Indy on the lakeshore in July, Caribbean Carnival and the CNE in August, TIFF for ten days in September with King Street closed for galas, the Royal Winter Fair in November, and the holiday party season through December. Every one of those changes the traffic and the availability, and the sporting events and nights out pages explain the pickup points.

Traffic, seasons and the honest drive times

The 401 across the top of the city, the Gardiner along the lake and the DVP up the valley are the three roads every Toronto transfer uses, and all three are slow from 7 to 9:30 and 3:30 to 7. The 407 toll highway across the north is the chauffeur's escape for the Markham, Vaughan and Oakville runs, and its toll is shown at booking rather than discovered later. Summer brings Gardiner lane closures and the festival street closures; winter brings the first snowfall's chaos in late November and the ice storms of February. Ontario 511 publishes the closures and dispatch reads it before every pickup. The honest figures: Pearson to the Financial District is thirty minutes at 6 am and seventy at 5 pm; the engine's suggested pickup for a departure knows the difference.

The corporate city

Bay Street's banks and law firms, the hospital corridor, the tech offices at King and Spadina, the head offices along the 401 in Mississauga and Markham, the universities: Toronto's corporate accounts are the largest we run. The typical profile has Pearson and Billy Bishop as the airports, the Royal York, the Four Seasons or the Shangri-La as the hotel, the Premium Sedan for the partners and the Executive Sedan for everyone else, and the hourly chauffeur for the day of meetings across the 905. One monthly invoice, itemised by traveller and cost centre.

What a limo costs in Toronto

The fare is fixed by the exact addresses and the vehicle class, shown before you book. Distance is the main driver - Pearson to downtown is a different fare from Pearson to Oshawa - and the class is the second: Executive Sedan, Premium Sedan, Luxury SUV, Sprinter, stretch, coach, in that order. The 407 toll is added where the route uses it and shown at booking; there is no surge, no meter and no gratuity added. Hourly bookings for the stretch limousine and the Sprinter carry a minimum, shown when you choose the hourly option. The fleet page has the capacities and the engine on this page has the number for your address in seconds.

Weddings, proms and the stretch season

Toronto's wedding season runs May to October and the Saturday stretch limousines are booked out by March: the banquet halls in Vaughan and Woodbridge, the hotel weddings downtown, the Distillery and the waterfront for the photographs, the vineyards in Niagara for the destination weekend. Prom season is the last three Saturdays of June across the GTA's hundreds of schools. The wedding and prom pages cover the plans; the desk covers the dates.

Day trips and the corridor

Niagara Falls in ninety minutes on the QEW, with the wineries at Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Shaw Festival on the way; Muskoka and the cottage country in two and a half hours north on the 400; Blue Mountain for the skiing; Stratford for the festival; Kingston and the Thousand Islands in three hours; Prince Edward County's wineries in two and a half. Montreal in five and a half hours and Ottawa in four and a half on the 401 corridor, priced as one fixed fare with the return built in on the city-to-city service. Buffalo's airport and the Bills' stadium in two hours on the cross-border service.

Toronto's own rules

Toronto licenses limousines and their drivers through Municipal Licensing and Standards, and a licensed limousine may only be pre-arranged - it cannot be hailed on the street or wait at a taxi rank. That rule is why the pre-arranged curbs exist at Pearson and why a chauffeur at the Scotiabank Arena waits on a side street rather than at the door. The City of Toronto's vehicle-for-hire bylaw sets it out; our chauffeurs hold the city licence and the provincial commercial class.

Pearson arrival, worked through

A Sunday 6 pm landing at Terminal 1 from London on Air Canada, two travellers, three suitcases. The Luxury SUV was booked on Tuesday with the flight number; on Sunday the aircraft is twenty-five minutes late and the chauffeur's schedule moves with it. At 5:45 the passengers' phones receive the plate and the curb - the pre-arranged limousine area on the arrivals level, past the taxi rank. CBSA takes thirty-five minutes, the bags fifteen; the sixty included minutes cover it. Out of the doors at 6:50, into the SUV by 6:55, on the 427 south and the Gardiner east, and at a King West hotel at 7:40 on a Sunday. The fare on the receipt is the fare on Tuesday's confirmation; the 427 and the Gardiner have no tolls. Had the flight landed at Terminal 3 the curb would have been the same arrangement on the other side of the airport, and the chauffeur's text would have said so. Toronto Pearson's own ground-transportation page describes the curbs we use.

The 905, in detail

Half of the GTA's chauffeur bookings start or end outside the 416. Mississauga is the airport's own city and the head-office corridor along the 401 and the 403 - the Square One towers, the Airport Corporate Centre, Port Credit on the lake. Brampton to the north-west is the largest South Asian community in the country and the wedding weekends that go with it. Vaughan and Woodbridge are the banquet halls and the Vaughan Mills outlets; Markham and Richmond Hill the tech and the Chinese-Canadian business districts along Highway 7; Oakville and Burlington the lakeshore executives' homes and the Ford plant; Pickering, Ajax, Whitby and Oshawa the eastern commuter belt and the General Motors town. Every one of them is a fixed fare from Pearson or downtown, and the hourly chauffeur is the way to do a day across three of them.

Hotels and the drop-off

The Fairmont Royal York over Union Station, the Ritz-Carlton and the Shangri-La on the west side of the core, the Four Seasons and the Hazelton in Yorkville, the Park Hyatt, the St. Regis on Bay, the One King West, the Thompson and the Ace on King West, the Westin Harbour Castle on the waterfront, the airport strip's Sheraton Gateway inside Terminal 3 and the Marriott and Hilton on Dixon Road: the chauffeurs know each forecourt and each door that a car may stop at, which at the Royal York is not the Front Street side on a weekday afternoon. The travel desk books the hotel; the booking form takes its address.

Universities, hospitals and the institutions

The University of Toronto's three campuses, York, Toronto Metropolitan and the colleges book the September move-in and the convocation runs; the University Avenue hospitals - Toronto General, Mount Sinai, SickKids, Princess Margaret - and Sunnybrook to the north book the medical day; the courts at Osgoode Hall and 361 University book the corporate account's hourly car. The prom and graduation page covers the June convocations and the closed streets around King's College Circle.

Toronto in winter

The first real snowfall, usually in late November, is the day the city forgets how to drive and the airport transfers double in time; the ice storms of February close the Gardiner's ramps and the DVP's valley floods in the spring thaw. Every vehicle runs winter tyres from November, dispatch reads Ontario 511 through the day, and the engine's suggested pickup for a winter departure adds the margin. A chauffeur who has driven twenty Toronto winters is the product on those days.

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