CN Rail wants the District of West Vancouver to pay the company $3.7 million per year for continued access to the treasured Centennial Seawalk between Ambleside and Dundarave.
You could admire their audacity if it weren’t for their naked greed.
It smacks of the recent shakedown of the City of Vancouver for CP’s Arbutus corridor rail line. Vancouver taxpayers ended up buying the corridor for $55 million and, for now, it is a popular walking and cycling route.
But unlike the Arbutus line scenario, CN hasn’t lost the use of its rail line because of the Seawalk. In fact, the line has been physically protected thanks to the infrastructure paid for through municipal taxes.
Railway companies surveyed, planned and built much of the Lower Mainland from a colonial outpost to Canada’s largest western city. And it was, indeed, a railroad that clinched the West’s entrance into confederation, making Canada whole for the first time. But in the modern day, you couldn’t really ask for much worse a neighbour.
Because of their federal jurisdiction, railways operate with almost total impunity from local governments.
We’d suggest West Vancouver’s MP not walk but run to her transportation minister’s office and start wielding whatever influence she can.
The same goes for West Vancouver’s two Liberal MLAs as the province still owns the right of way and leases it to CN.
And the District of West Vancouver ought to be playing hardball. Public access to the waterfront is worth the fight CN has coming to them.
No matter how this ends, it’s going to cost West Vancouverites. We might even – tongue in cheek – suggest that those taxpayers start buying stock in CN.
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