Time for CP, city to cut a deal on Arbutus Corridor, experts say
UBC business professors urge both sides to act like ‘big boys’
Nothing will be resolved if Canadian Pacific Railway moves ahead with plans to start storing rail cars along Vancouver’s contentious Arbutus Corridor, two experts from the UBC Sauder School of Business say.
In a discussion on Thursday focusing on the future of the rail corridor which runs from False Creek to the Fraser River in Vancouver, Sauder School of Business Prof. Robin Lindsey and associate professor Thomas Davidoff said they feel CP will never resume passenger or freight service in the corridor and any plans to store rail cars along the route will create traffic headaches for residents and do little for the company’s bottom line.
What needs to happen is for both CP and the City of Vancouver sit down and hammer out a deal for the land, they say.
Davidoff points out the land could be very valuable if the right zoning is put in place to build residential units along the corridor, and Lindsey notes that CP gains little financially if the railway is simply used as a storage site for rail cars.
“It is like, come on, be big boys and get that deal done,” Davidoff said.
Some real estate analysts have pegged the land value at near $400 million if the land now designated for transportation only gets rezoned for housing. Davidoff said that area is very expensive and housing units would make developers a lot of money.
“It depends on the land use,” he said. “If you can put up houses, it is worth a fortune.”
Lindsey, who has looked at the situation from a transportation perspective, said CP’s last customer along the rail line was in 2001. That was when the Molson brewery on Burrard Street started using trucks instead of the rail line to move its product.
And Lindsey said the gradient on the rail line is suitable for a hiking and cycling route, but the price may be too much for the city.
CP and the City of Vancouver continue to fight over the future of the rail line. After CP made it public that the line will be reopened, the City of Vancouver filed an application with the Canadian Transportation Agency and it is still ongoing. The city wants to see an independent tribunal order CP to sell the property at the net salvage price it was worth in 2004. The city also says CP breached the Canadian Transportation Act after discontinuing the use of the rail line.
“Get this ended, as it is costing a lot in litigation and causing bad feelings,” Lindsey said. “CP doesn’t have much use for it … The trains would have to run very slowly,” he added, due to the numerous roads that cut through the line.
He also calls CP’s move to bring in rail cars for storage “a bargaining ploy” with the city.
Lindsey also said the corridor, which does not go into the downtown core, doesn’t connect efficiently with existing bus routes.
And they both agree the proposal by CP may be a stalling tactic by the company to get a high price on the land.
Last year, CP began to clear the tracks and said it planned to resume using the rail line, which has been unused for more than a decade. In the process, CP tore up many urban gardens that had been created along the rail line after it was put out of service, angering some residents.