Quote:
Originally Posted by jrdtown
Is there ever a chance to get rid of those railyards so close to the city? What would the price of that land have to be for rail the companies to consider relocation? Is there a place where they could relocate?
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In reverse order, there isn't any undeveloped or readily available land that could realistically replace the existing yards that would allow the Port rail operations to continue to function. There was an expectation 25 years ago that the rail companies might find other ways of operating, and free up the land, but
a 2006 study concluded that was unlikely. CN sold off the land they could reasonably anticipate giving up, along the entire south side of Terminal in the early 2000s, which is where Long & McQuade built their building and then the car dealerships bought land and developed their properties, and more recently Rize developed their office buildings.
The two Port container operations in Burrard Inlet have invested billions, and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
The
False Creek Flats Plan was initiated in 2013, and completed in 2017, and created a plan that recognised that the tracks were unlikely to go anywhere, and created a framework for how development could evolve to accommodate a lot more jobs, and some limited residential opportunities close to transit nodes (which we're now starting to see proposed).