Winnipeg Construction IX

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by esquire

The difference of course between The Forks/Fort Rouge Yards and the existing facilities is that the railway replaced those obsolete facilities on their own dime... they were surplus lands, as compared to relocating actively used yards. There would have to be a massive public contribution to get the railways to give up land that they own and really have no intention of getting rid of.

And even at that, yards are one thing... you can plunk new ones down on a pre-existing rail line. Building new rail lines are another thing altogether for the reasons that CoryB went over.

I'm not denying that rail line relocation could be a positive change, but I look at rail line relocation and all I see is massive public expense with little short or even medium term benefit. There is far more low-hanging fruit that could deliver more when it comes to quality of life in the short term than the costly moon shot that is removing rail lines from Winnipeg.

Eventually it will make financial sense for the railways to build new yards and turn the existing facilities over for development, just as with The Forks. Think of it as a form of land banking... leave it alone and let the market decide when the time is right for rail line relocation to proceed. It's likely that better use will be made of the land when it's really necessary, at a far lower cost to the public.

what are the low hanging fruit that studying rail relocation is precluding us from doing?

again....we are slated to spend well over a billion dollars in the next ten years to deal with the rail line...likely closer to two billion....why is it unreasonable to look for alternatives....how are those staggering costs not also precluding any low hanging fruit investment?...with no gain whatsoever.

The rail company's desire to move has no bearing on the issue....by waiting 100 years for them to move, we will have spent 10 times over the cost of moving them today, with no value gained to the city, its tax base or quality of life.

rail relocation is not a cost like a bridge...its an investment in growth....to me it is an obvious choice...even if it comes in at twice the cost of bridges.

but lets at least spend a few hundred grand and find out what that cost is.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by CoryB

trueviking -- Present your side to have the residents of either East St Paul or Richot vote in favour of rail relocation in a theoretical referendum.

In my assumption I assumed the rail companies to have buy in would approve any relocation within 10 km of Winnipeg due to the location of their existing main lines. Also in your presentation please address the concerns from residents with the proposed rail crossing of Henderson or Pembina based on your selection of RM.

I would argue that I am not stuck in the current but looking at the high level opportunity costs the project presents. I would love to hear your side of this as you have great depth of knowledge in city planning which I do not.

put the line and new yard 50kms away from Winnipeg....any rural RM would fall over itself to get that kind of employment and tax base....CN would prefer it because it would not lose time travelling through the city....they actually don't like being in the middle of cities....given a new rail yard outside the city, they would jump at it.

[esquire]

In my view, the low-hanging fruit consists of improving parks, recreation and AT facilities, bringing zoning rules into the future so that not everything built outside of downtown looks like a suburban wasteland, improving transit (not just RT but the unsexy old street bus network), making the politically tough but necessary decision to restrict development on the edge of the city, putting more emphasis on dealing with the challenges of the North End rather than simply trying to create a new North End next door on the CP yards site, all of those small marginal improvements that don't have the — punch of allowing a grand ribbon cutting ceremony on the former railway line but will ultimately provide better bang for the buck.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by trueviking

put the line and new yard 50kms away from Winnipeg....any rural RM would fall over itself to get that kind of employment and tax base....CN would prefer it because it would not lose time travelling through the city....they actually don't like being in the middle of cities....given a new rail yard outside the city, they would jump at it.

That's one of the reasons to avoid the whole scheme IMO. Winnipeg is not such a prosperous boomtown that we can afford to spend money to encourage the relocation of jobs and people outside the city.

I get that there are some truly noxious industries we might not actually want here... I, for one, would not care to live by a giant biomatter incinerator or toxic chemical plant. However, railyards are a far cry from that.

[bomberjet]

....(comment removed) forget it lol we need a real study to figure this out.

[1ajs]

Will the rail shops stay? Will the relocation kill those jobs and the service industries servicing the rail shops be lost?

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by esquire

That's one of the reasons to avoid the whole scheme IMO. Winnipeg is not such a prosperous boomtown that we can afford to spend money to encourage the relocation of jobs and people outside the city.

I get that there are some truly noxious industries we might not actually want here... I, for one, would not care to live by a giant biomatter incinerator or toxic chemical plant. However, railyards are a far cry from that.

How many people in Winnipeg are employed in the rail industry? I honestly have no idea and would like to know.

I cant see the number of employees inside Winnipeg justifying the price tag related to dealing with the lines being inside city limits.... And I'm not sure moving a small portion of the working population slightly outside Winnipeg really counts as hurting Winnipeg, we have a lot of bedroom communities going up as is. Might be nice if one of those communities had it's own industry and employees.

Seems like a win/win to me, cant just think about Winnipeg here. Winnipeg gets rid of a very expensive annoyance and another town in Manitoba gets a new industry and people.

[Wigglez]

For the record Viking. I hope you're pitching railway relocation articles to the freep daily... Can't let the Conservative government let the idea fade from peoples minds so no one yells if/when they cancel the study.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Wigglez

Seems like a win/win to me, cant just think about Winnipeg here.

Why not? Why should any Winnipegger be on board with a plan that spends taxpayer money to shunt railways and rail-related industries, jobs and tax revenues to the RM of Macdonald, Rosser or wherever else it ends up going?

Our city's entire planning focus is on limiting sprawl, and encouraging bedroom communities would not be consistent with that.

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by esquire

Why not? Why should any Winnipegger be on board with a plan that spends taxpayer money to shunt railways and rail-related industries, jobs and tax revenues to the RM of Macdonald, Rosser or wherever else it ends up going?

Our city's entire planning focus is on limiting sprawl, and encouraging bedroom communities would not be consistent with that.

Do you not pay provincial or federal taxes? Not only are you currently paying for various projects in Manitoba but also all of Canada....

Any plan to move the rail lines out of Winnipeg would obviously include provincial and federal money. You could likely sell the idea to the province and feds a little easier if you're boosting a small towns economy while removing an annoyance from inside Winnipeg.

And again how many people are we talking about here? how many people in Winnipeg are employed by Via, CN, CP, and require the yards to be inside city limits to stay and work here?

As for the city's plan to focus on limiting sprawl..... how better to do that than to remove massive black holes from inside city limits..... the amount of development that can take place in the CP railyard alone is mind blowing...

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by Wigglez

the amount of development that can take place in the CP railyard alone is mind blowing...

Central Winnipeg already has many existing empty post-industrial spaces where a mind-blowing amount of development could take place. It's not happening. I don't see how creating a huge amount of additional empty space by relocating the yards is going to make things better -- if anything, wouldn't the huge glut of empty land just drive down land values even further, making it even less likely that we'd get the kind of dense urban development we want to see?

[1ajs]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ It's somehow amusing how that area is all bankers and lawyers and accountants and engineers and HR people and IT people, and then you have these buildings on the same block where they bottle pancake syrup and bags of candy and nuts like it's 1953. One of those little bits of classic Winnipeg that I hope will never change!

one of the nuty club buildings is a phone company thats doing fiber for cheap in the area as well.

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by GarryEllice

Central Winnipeg already has many existing empty post-industrial spaces where a mind-blowing amount of development could take place. It's not happening. I don't see how creating a huge amount of additional empty space by relocating the yards is going to make things better -- if anything, wouldn't the huge glut of empty land just drive down land values even further, making it even less likely that we'd get the kind of dense urban development we want to see?

There's lots of empty land in south Winnipeg that is suddenly a massive sprawling suburb. Amazing what empty spaces can accomplish in Winnipeg. Would be nice if it happened much much closer to downtown Winnipeg wouldn't it?

Also, if you can explain to me how empty land will drive down land values in the area further than a loud, large, and polluting rail yard I would love to hear it. Whyte Ridge houses must be worth nothing.

As for the empty former industrial buildings in/around downtown Winnipeg, Viking gave me some great fuel for that argument moments ago!

https://twitter.com/brent_bellamy/status/750466735682129920

Give it time, they're being redeveloped. Empty space is vastly different than an old building. Costs are higher to redevelop a heritage building than to simply develop an empty lot.

[1ajs]

we do have center port though witch could benifit from the rail relocation i would imagin more that i think about it.

we shouldnt totaly get rid of rail keep the via right away into our downtown...

[1ajs]

speaking of empty buildings who ownds the old clay dryer building on keniston something inside it came to my attention id like to rescue cement plant w ever u wana call it.

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by 1ajs

we do have center port though witch could benifit from the rail relocation i would imagin more that i think about it.

we shouldnt totaly get rid of rail keep the via right away into our downtown...

I remember hearing years ago when Centre Port was starting to form into an idea that moving the yards to that end of the city to serve that area would be a great idea. It even keeps the jobs inside Winnipeg limits.

As long as the CP yard isnt cutting the city in half for the next 100 years I don't care much where they move it. I don't want my tax dollars for the rest of my life dedicated to paying off and maintaining infrastructure to mitigate train disruptions inside the city. Seems like moving them out in 1 (admittedly) massive payment is a better use.

[1ajs]

Originally Posted by Wigglez

I remember hearing years ago when Centre Port was starting to form into an idea that moving the yards to that end of the city to serve that area would be a great idea. It even keeps the jobs inside Winnipeg limits.

As long as the CP yard isnt cutting the city in half for the next 100 years I don't care much where they move it. I don't want my tax dollars for the rest of my life dedicated to paying off and maintaining infrastructure to mitigate train disruptions inside the city. Seems like moving them out in 1 (admittedly) massive payment is a better use.

true and we need to keep growing a vision and presure should be put on the new government to keep moving manitoba forward on this vision we have not just shelf it.. lack of planning will be the donfall of our civilization as a whole.. words of my uncle whos in the upper management at kinder morgan

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by Wigglez

There's lots of empty land in south Winnipeg that is suddenly a massive sprawling suburb. Amazing what empty spaces can accomplish in Winnipeg. Would be nice if it happened much much closer to downtown Winnipeg wouldn't it?

No, building a sprawling suburb in the centre of the city would not be nice at all. And, again, there's already plenty of empty land in central Winnipeg. (I wasn't talking about redeveloping heritage buildings.) South Portage is full of surface lots. Chinatown is full of vacant lots. South Point Douglas is a blank slate. A little farther out there's the Parker lands and vast expanses of post-industrial land in St. Boniface. Empty land is the one thing we already have in abundance.

Originally Posted by Wigglez

Whyte Ridge houses must be worth nothing.

Whyte Ridge is low-density suburban sprawl, which is what you get when land is cheap. Dense development happens when land is expensive. Creating a huge amount of new cheap land is counterproductive if we want dense development to happen in an economically natural way.

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by GarryEllice

No, building a sprawling suburb in the centre of the city would not be nice at all. And, again, there's already plenty of empty land in central Winnipeg. (I wasn't talking about redeveloping heritage buildings.) South Portage is full of surface lots. Chinatown is full of vacant lots. South Point Douglas is a blank slate. A little farther out there's the Parker lands and vast expanses of post-industrial land in St. Boniface. Empty land is the one thing we already have in abundance.



Whyte Ridge is low-density suburban sprawl, which is what you get when land is cheap. Dense development happens when land is expensive. Creating a huge amount of new cheap land is counterproductive if we want dense development to happen in an economically natural way.

I apologise you appear to have the wrong idea of what I was getting at, I didn't make it very clear.

I'm not proposing we build Sage Creek where the CP yard currently is... That would be ALMOST as stupid as building Sage Creek in the first place, building it closer to the core would be the only advantage of doing that.

In a healthy progressive community new urban communities can be built on large areas of reclaimed land. A quick Google search can yield many results of this around the world. Here's one in Halifax I've been following for a while. http://www.kingswharf.ca/about/

As for the part highlighted above - Other's here can better explain the futility of expecting high land value in a city that has endless expansion potential, in a city that is currently letting that endless expansion happen, and a city that has let itself become a slave to cars. I want to live in a world where as of the end of this sentence no more suburbs will be built in Winnipeg but that's not going to happen...... I fail to see how building and maintaining several bridges/underpasses/tunnels over/under the CP yard is more economical and natural than moving the yards and using the land. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how many people work in the rail industry in Winnipeg... I imagine if we did go full idiocy and build Sage Creek 2.0 on the CP yards the tax income from that land alone will make up for whatever lost economic 'benefit' we get from it.

Again, in a healthy progressive community amazing things can be done with infill property. We don't even need to look at other cities to find examples of what COULD be, Winnipeg had its own proposal that could be a good example of land use on the CP yards - http://cibinel.com/project/polo-park-stadium-site-redevelopment-plan/

But I guess communities that fight to have billion's of dollars of infrastructure built to avoid trains rather than moving them out of the city get abandoned Target buildings instead eh?

[GarryEllice]

The whole rail relocation thing strikes me as another instance of Winnipeg's undying faith in megaprojects. All we need to do is spend $10 billion on this massive construction (/destruction) project and everything will be rosy!

My dream -- not a megaproject -- is to have strict green belt legislation prohibiting all further sprawl in Winnipeg and surrounding areas. That would instantly shift the economics in favour of densifying the existing city, filling in the abundant empty space and replacing strip malls with mid-rises.

If we put an end to sprawl, the gradual increase in city land values over time could eventually even make it economical to redevelop the rail yards, although there's an awful lot of empty and underused land to get through before we ever reach that point.

Greenbelt legislation would cost nothing, other than a huge amount of political capital, which I admit probably doesn't exist. But the money for rail line relocation probably doesn't exist either. And if it did, there would be better things to spend it on.