Sun columnist Daphne Bramham asks: Is Vancouver’s Arbutus corridor worth $100 million?
There’s no question that the hodgepodge of gardens along CP Rail’s Arbutus corridor are charming and no doubt that homeowners prefer gardens and a leafy walkway to trains.
But are Vancouverites willing to pay $100 million for it? Because that’s how much Canadian Pacific Railway wants for the 66-foot-wide right-of-way that runs for 11 kilometres from the Fraser River almost to False Creek. …
For politicians, it’s a bit of a nightmare.
Consider how generous taxpayers may feel toward one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, a community that already has more green space than most others and where, little more than a decade ago, resident Pamela Sauder declared herself and her neighbours to be Vancouver’s “crème de la crème.”
Consider that the Vision-dominated council’s top priority is ending homelessness. … Homes for the homeless or parks for the privileged? That’s how any agreement would likely be spun by at least a couple of Vision’s competitors. …
Under pressure, it’s not clear how much local politicians might be willing to spend in a neighbourhood where residents generally have more influence and are more inclined to vote than in others. Nor is it clear just how much taxpayers might be willing to pay or whether these privileged residents might ever willingly give up their free gardens, even for rapid-transit or bus lines.
The value of the Arbutus corridor is, in one sense, incalculable. What is a right-of-way that runs across the city worth in 50 years, or a hundred, or in some time beyond our imagining, when, like an arterial in a human body, urban life needs it to function in good health?
Imagine the cost of acquiring and developing a right-of-way to handle the Expo SkyTrain line, which now runs along the Central Park line of the B.C. Electric Railway. In truth, we wouldn’t know because we wouldn’t do it. The cost, the politics and the legal impediments would be too onerous. And while options exist: to tunnel, to use Kingsway as the Millennium line does on Lougheed, or to rely on surface light-rail, it’s likely we would still be debating the issue.
Most certainly, little of the growth that has accommodated tens of thousands of people in transit-oriented housing, not to mention the related commercial and retail development – and the jobs that go with it – would be concentrated along one of the region-shaping corridors of Metro.
While there will be high-stakes negotiations for the Arbutus corridor (including the possibility of development on adjacent parcels to pay for acquisition), one thing should be not be on the table: the loss of the corridor. That would be selling off our future.
It has always been a transportation corridor, it is legally now, and it must remain so for whatever follows. The price is disputable, the value is not.
It is a shame that writer Bramham framed the discussion as “free gardens for the rich” vs. “housing for the poor”. As if these are mutually exclusive alternatives.
But the needs of the newspaper industry must be served — and in this case, the framing is used divide the readership along class lines and pit them against each other. Nothing like self-righteous anger to stoke attention.
Sigh. And so, the discussion wallows downward.
Obviously $100 million is not the value of a transportation corridor – it’s the value of the land, subdivided and sold to developers for condos. That’s not going to happen – the courts already ruled in Vancouver’s favour there – so we’re left at an impasse.
What I’m wondering is why the city can’t expropriate the land. Of course expropriation isn’t free, either, as they would still have to pay a reasonable price for the land, but that price should be based on the land as a transportation corridor, not potential condo construction site. Expropriation is also politically dangerous, but considering the long-running nature of this dispute, the (as far as I’m aware) relative popularity of the city’s position and unpopularity of CP, I don’t think that would be too big of an issue here. Is there an appetite for that in the city?
Due to what’s called paramountcy.
Railways are regulated by the Federal government as Federal undertakings, whereas the City exercised powers derived from the Province.
The hierarchy provides that Federal government gives powers to the Provinces, and the Provinces give powers to the municipalities.
A municipality cannot overule the Federal government’s regulation of a Federal undertaking by expropriating (or enacting bylaws that conflict with Federal laws and regulations).
The need for Arbutus as a rapid transit corridor only valid until it was decided to route the Canada Line down Cambie. Now it is unlikely that neighbourhood will ever justify the expense of rail based transit.
I’m aware that population density alone doesn’t justify anything, but it’s interesting to watch hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in an attempt to get the population of the Cambie corridor up to the level of the Arbutus one. I’m quite sure almost everyone in Metro Vancouver erroneously thinks Cambie is the more populous route.
As Gordon said, the importance of preserving the route isn’t some unforeseeable point in the future when rail transit may or may not be justified, but the simple fact that it’s an uninterrupted path through an increasingly dense city.
It’s not just residential population that drives demand, it’s also jobs (and shopping) (ie offices, hospitals, shopping mall, Langara college)
i.e. Metrotown is one of the busiest stations – and that traffic largely occurs on weekends. So you aren’t just serving commuters who travel in and out once a day.
The same can be said of retail customers – stores often do poorly in purely residential areas, and better in areas with a daytime office population or more mixed customer base.
The Arbutus corridor can be used for a secondary route – whether local stop streetcar or eventually a high capacity line like Canada Line. There are many cities with parallel rapid transit lines. As a secondary route, an Arbutus streetcar can start small and be gradually intensified.
The danger here, is that if you set a precedent that the line must be underground (i.e. to preserve surface gardens and paths) – when the RoW is plainly geared towards an at-grade route – you will prevent a secondary route from developing because of cost. Imposing costly specifications is a sure-fire barrier to entry.