The ancient CP railway track continues to change into one of Vancouver’s treasures.
While there a few days ago, I was reminded that the Arbutus Greenway became the subject of a classic battle between Vancouver’s citizens and a small band of preservationists, who wanted this 42-acre strip of Vancouver’s land to remain a private park for local able-bodied walkers — exclusivity defined.
That noisy clash of wills seems to me now like a preview in miniature of the upcoming one over the vast acreage of Vancouver’s land now exclusively zoned for low density. A.K.A. the “City Plan”. Blogger and pundit fodder for many years, I should think.
This trip, I saw a series of light towers — sporting solar panels — located on a darkish part of the Greenway.
And, as usual, lots more people were on it than the last time I was there. I’m intrigued to see what will happen when we transition from temporary to permanent Greenway.
I certainly had a wonderful time riding the Arbutus Greenway with you, Ken! Your knowledge of the corridor, both past and present, is incredible! And what a treasure for ALL this corridor is becoming!
And you’re SO right that the needs of the MANY (the PUBLIC benefits) always, always outweigh the wishes of the very, very privileged FEW. The zoning fights will probably be legendary, but hopefully Vancouver will end up greatly increasing *housing opportunity* in every neighbourhood.
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Hi Tim: let’s do it again some time — but on a sunny day.
I wish the city had called it the Arbutus transit corridor. Yes, buried in the fine print was the fact that the city reserves the right to use the arbutus right-of-way as a light rail corridor, but no one is going to remember that 15 to 20 years from now. The “Crème de la Crème” around Arbutus are going to go berzerk when their “Greenway” finally looks like it is going to get transit.
Calling it the Arbutus transit corridor from day one would have avoided the inevitable “nobody told me” argument.