The Arbutus Saga Continues
Not much transit news about with the school strike and the lead up to the November civic elections, but old news is still news.
The CPR want $100 million for the land and the City of Vancouver wants to pay only $20 million, yet $100 million is a bargain if one wants the land for a transit corridor, considering the cost per km. for a subway starts at about $200 million.
Metro Vancouver (GVRD) should by the land and put an end to this nonsense once and for all and use it for a tram service.
Memo to the CPR: Why not run a DMU service from New West Minster to Vainer Park on the line. a 30 minute service with a pair of GTW’s or alike would be feasible without doubling the track and you may even get a subsidy from metro Vancouver and/or TransLink.
Memo to gardeners using the Arbutus: If the city or metro Vancouver pay for the Arbutus, kiss goodbye any thought of using he land for truck gardens. You best have a plan B and use it.
Arbutus Corridor talks break down, CP to resume clearing work on rail line
By Jeff Lee, Vancouver SunSeptember 12, 2014 3:32 PM
Resident Sarah Myambo watches as workers remove her community garden from a stretch of abandoned CP Rail line in Vancouver, B.C., on Thursday August 14, 2014. The once-abandoned 11-kilometre-long Arbutus Corridor has been used by residents for many years as a greenway where community gardens were erected. The removal of the gardens is the culmination of a growing dispute between the rail company and the City of Vancouver over the value of the land.
Photograph by: Darryl Dyck, THE CANADIAN PRESS
VANCOUVER ai??i?? Negotiations between the City of Vancouver and Canadian Pacific over the future of the Arbutus Corridor have broken down, the railway said Friday.
As a result, CP will resume work to return the 11-kilometre line to operating standards.
In a statement CP said it had met with the city earlier Friday to discuss the future of the line and to explore “a number of options to reach a fair market settlement” but was unable to get the city to move significantly on its offer.
It had agreed earlier to suspend line-clearing work, including the removal of gardens encroaching on its right-of-way.
“Despite exploring a number of options to reach a fair market settlement, the parties were unable to arrive at an agreement,” CP said in the statement.
“CP remains extremely disappointed that the City of Vancouver continues to significantly undervalue this corridor.”
Mayor Gregor Robertson’s office said he was unhappy with the breakdown in negotiations and still believes the railway is using the threat of returning the line to operating status as a way to pressure the city to pay more.
Vancouver, which won a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that it had the right to control zoning of the line, had offered CP $20 million for it. The city had previously designated the corridor for transportation and greenways, and had resisted CP’s attempts to have it rezoned for residential and commercial development.
CP has never indicated what it wants for the land but in press releases the mayor has suggested it is upwards of $100 million.
Robertson won the last two elections by default and people were tired of the freak show… Cadman and others who I frequently saw near our office in downtown Vancouver – skipping work if you call being a bribed councillor, work
This time around, there are two legitimate candidates for mayor: Meena Wong…
http://www.straight.com/news/722781/meena-wong-city-vancouver-cant-sit-idly-while-people-suffer
And Krik Lapointe…
http://www.straight.com/news/695766/will-vancouver-npa-candidate-kirk-lapointe-draw-upon-malcolm-gladwells-wisdom-mayoral-race
Peter Finch previously had a great comment which can’t be outdone…
http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/continued-angst-over-the-arbutus-corridor/#comment-97538.
If the Davie Street crowd and mindless bimbos re-elect Robertson (he’s so yummy) they deserve what they get…
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/18/gregor-robertson-vancouver-developers-lunch_n_4987015.html
Condo ghettoization along BRT corridors acting as precursors for s-train and subway lines in Vancouver by Eric Chris
We’ve previously established the inconvenient truth that transit by TransLink worsens road congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions. Now the next bomb – s-trains and subways following BRT used to concentrate ridership along a few major corridors represent billions of dollars of future liabilities for taxpayers.
http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/the-truth-slowly-ekes-out-surprise-surprise/
S-train and subway scam costing taxpayers billions of dollars now and later
When the concrete used for the s-train and subway lines cracks and becomes unsafe for transport in 50 years, future taxpayers will be stuck paying for the refurbishment of the s-train and subway lines after the slimy developers selling shoddily built condos along the s-train and subway lines today have made their loot. More likely, future taxpayers will cut their losses and simply abandon the s-train and subway lines to build tram lines, instead.
What’s stopping us from doing the same, presently, to avoid the billions of dollars pilfered by TransLink awarding contracts to “certain shady firms” in Quebec? Condo developments along s-train and subway lines are destined to become future ghettos in Vancouver. Building codes in Metro Vancouver are hardly world class, and it isn’t hard for developers to have their projects rubber stamped by Vancouver council which is eager to collect tax dollars from future “condo dwellers” here.
Condo ghettoization and bubble along s-train and subway lines
If you look around Vancouver, all you see are condo buildings masked in canopies for emergency repairs to the leaky condos. These repairs are rarely intended to be permanent and are done by the owners as cheaply as possible to dump their rotting condos onto the next unsuspecting sucker, usually some unfortunate individual who has immigrated to Vancouver from overseas. He or she is unaware of the “leaky condo” problem here and buys into a money sucking personal disaster.
I know people who have bought their dream mid or high rise condo in “beautiful Vancouver” – to subsequently lose their life savings, repairing one thing after another. I truly feel bad for them and empathize. If the City of Vancouver weren’t “rubber stamping” cheap high rise developments along s-train and subway lines and if the City of Vancouver imposed height restrictions on condo projects and enforced condo standards adding costs to condos by the developers who control Mayor Robertson and his fellow goons on the Vision council, this wouldn’t be happening.
Eventually, in 20 years to 30 years, the market for condos will dry up in Vancouver. There will be too many rotting condos and only slum landlords will be buying into condo buildings with negative equity – to rent to the poor and disadvantaged until the slum buildings are condemned and torn down by the City of Vancouver. Vancouver’s condo bubble will burst.
Middle class families will flee Vancouver for detached homes in Surrey, Delta and Langley. This is already taking place, and much of the real economic activity providing good jobs is occurring in Surrey, Delta and Langley. I don’t want to be too specific but Delta is ready to boom from future energy projects, which are too sensitive to disclose, but Mayor Jackson of Delta and the business community know what they are.
http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/446150/vancouvers-middle-class-shrinks-poverty-spreads-along-skytrain/
http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/dead-parrot-sketch/
In the decades to follow: many fleabags, poor families, sex workers, meth lab chemists and drug addicts will inhabit the rotting high rise condo slums along s-train and subway lines. This is presently the case to some degree, anyhow, and anyone with half a brain avoids living the “good life” in a high rise condo on a s-train or subway line to ride the s-train or subway line into downtown Vancouver for a dead-end job with no future. It’s a gold rush here from greedy overseas developers making a killing from the construction of high condo towers which are going to exasperate the current raft of socio-economic misery in Vancouver in the near future.
Rooting these slimy developers (from Dubai or wherever) out won’t we easy in Vancouver, and the culture of corruption in Vancouver is pervasive – extending into the transportation department providing the false “economics of the subway along Broadway, for example” and imaginary reduction of “road congestion” by the subway along Broadway – all to help crooked developers gain more real estate for their “high rise condos” ruining our communities and blighting our city.
If you haven’t had the chance to watch the documentary “The Condo Game”, it is worth it. If you own a condo in Vancouver along a slimy s-train or subway line or Toronto along a subway, sell it… before it is too late…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC6cfUtZoEs
Alternative to filth, crime and s-trains
There is an alternative to this: promote trams and prudent development by local residents rather than condo development from shady types laundering drug money from overseas to build condos along s-train lines here. Trams spread out and moderate development evenly throughout the city. Quality townhouses, detached homes or small condo developments are built along tram lines. This is the answer in my opinion and in the opinion of many academics who care more about the city and transit than profiting from the s-trains and subways by the skunks at TransLink.
http://www.sxd.sala.ubc.ca/8_research/sxd_frb07transport.pdf
This might be a little off topic, but if you are riding transit in China someday, be careful not to sit in a yellow seat… unless you’re a senior…
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29130357
And the top rated comment on the CBC on the Arbutus corridor this week…
“doublemartini
What is Mayor Moonbeam thinking?
The city is challenging a federally regulated company against a land grant that is over 100 years old.
The land belongs to CP Rail, simple as that.
He is wasting taxpayer’s dollars simply to grand stand and try to make himself look good in an election year on a challenge that the city won’t win.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/arbutus-corridor-city-of-vancouver-seeks-injunction-to-stop-cp-rail-1.2787049
It looks as if I hit a home run with the following comment in the CBC on Gregor. It is the top ranked comment and it is safe to say that at least 23 people won’t be voting for Gregor and his subway…
” I’m totally ticked off that this loser got elected. Pipelines = federal issue.
Garbage pick up = municipal issue. Gregor is an egotistical opportunist who I can’t stand.
How about getting those TransLink diesel buses using diesel fuel imported from Alberta off the the No. 9 trolleybus route, big guy? How about getting the trolleybuses back on Cambie Street and the carbon polluting diesel buses off Cambie Street, Greeny Gregor?
23 Likes”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gregor-robertson-makes-pipeline-fight-key-part-of-re-election-campaign-1.2788414
Rather than use the existing rail lines and easement along the Arbutus Corridor to run trams to UBC, the Vision party is citing “safety” concerns as the pretext for its opposition to the tram line to UBC. Oh yes, “safety” and it has nothing to do with the mobster-developers who have bought up land on Broadway in anticipation of the Broadway subway which is supposedly going to take 200,000 cars or whatever the new number of cars removed is now off the roads. Opposing the tram line to UBC isn’t to aid SNC Lavalin bribing certain government employees favouring the Broadway subway making SNC Lavalin, a bundle of cash – nope.
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2015/08/12/vancouver-appeals-in-fight-for-arbutus-lands
“The City of Vancouver is using its lawyers in the latest push to try and stop rail operations from resuming on the Canadian Pacific Railway Arbutus Corridor line — alleging that CPR broke the Canadian Transportation Act after lengthy negotiations to buy the land failed.
It’s written to the Canadian Transportation Agency demanding an order that CPR must now sell the land at its 2004 salvage value, saying CPR hasn’t used the land for rail operations for 15 years.
But as CPR has now stated its intention to start the line, Penny Ballem, city manager, said her concern has to do with public safety.”
Penny Ballem is an overpaid and crooked tool, in my opinion. She nauseates me.
Of course, the Cambie Street subway is safe. There is nothing unsafe about people falling onto tracks (Cambie Street subway line tracks) and being killed.
http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Canada+Line+service+disrupted+Thursday+medical+emergency+Olympic+Village+Station/11288884/story.html
Right now, corrupt employees at TransLink are being purged. I predict that the COV will be replacing many of its transportation “engineers”, facing criminal charges over the next three years.