Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
I still do not see the benefit of this corridor for transit. It is too close to the Canada Line.
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Three words: Transit Oriented Development.
Transit in Vancouver isn't just about moving people who already have places to live, it's also about giving people better places to live. And Kerrisdale already has a good head start on density (and some projects are happening elsewhere on the Corridor). The 16 bus is already heavily used, and it is slow as hell. And with properties in the area starting to go for over $3 million for a crappy war era bungalow, eventually selling density will be the only way the market can be sustainable.
And Cambie isn't that close to Arbutus. Kerrisdale is a good 3km away from Oakridge. Compare that to Expo/Millennium: Joyce is about 3km away from Rupert.
Or look at Toronto where they have built a thriving downtown core around a U shaped subway with multiple feeder streetcar lines. Or in Central Montreal, you are never far from either the Orange, Green, or Blue line (Orange and Green run parallel almost a couple blocks from each other, and the Blue line gets as close as about 4km to the Green).
Great cities are built on dense transit networks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trofirhen
Do you envision an eventual Arbutus Line as rrt (metro) or lrt (light rail)?
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I think LRT, but using streetcar technology (like Flexity and not typical North American huge light rail cars) because at some points it might mix with traffic if the network is expanded.
The preserved ROW can make this a very cheap implementation of LRT/Streetcars. You could probably build from Science World to Marpole for well under $300 million (if the land is cheap).
Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
Why not leave it in CP's hands?
They keep maintaining the ROW. They keep landowners from encroaching. Taxes are collected from them(if they pay taxes on ROW)
When it comes time, then the city can go for it.
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Because leaving it in the hands of CP is the problem. They don't want it in their hands and they are doing everything possible to be allowed to subdivide it and sell it in pieces on the open real estate market at market rates (probably by selling large portions of it to a new company that the CP execs have shares in, then develop it and keep the profits out of regular CP shareholders pockets).
If Vancouver ignores the possibility of buying it when it comes up, then legally, they would be allowed to sell it. In fact, the thing keeping them from doing that right now is the zoning, as anyone who buys the land would be unable to do anything on it. But that stalemate can only last so long until they annoy city residents enough to force council to change zoning, or find the right buyer who has the mayor in his pocket.