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Originally Posted by bob1954
Would someone explain why everything ends (borders) the CP tracks? Are the CP tracks the only thing stopping this (West Village) from extending further south of the tracks? I'm just courious about this. It seems it's more of a phsycollogical barrier than a phisical one. Having said all that, West Village and the area south, never seem to get the attention that East Village and Rail Lands get. IMO
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The CPR tracks are what had to built in 1883 to keep BC in confederation. If I remember my history correctly, the CPR also got the land for 1 mile on each side of their mainline tracks.
In this location it appears they sold the land for the creosote plant (presumably for creosoting railway ties that the CPR needed for building & maintaining their tracks), so the people moving into Scarboro & lower Scarboro probably wern't too upset that the stinky creosote plant was 'on the other side of the tracks'.
Now after 125+ years of trains rolling by, we want to redevelop this land and easily join it to the rest of the neighborhood south of the railway.
Let's dust off the old Trudeau-era Federal plans to remove the CPR tracks from downtown and build some rail tunnels under the Nose Hill (one EB and one WB).
Seriously.
The Western portal would be near Bearspaw Dam Road & 85th St running under Silver Springs, and the Eastern portal would be near 64th Ave / Nose Creek. All the tracks between Bowness, Downtown and Inglewood would be ripped up and the land redeveloped, or turned back to parkland (aka Rails to Trails).
Hopefully the recession is over by the time this gets all approved, so selling the old CPR lands for redevelopment downtown during the next economic boom should easily pay for the cost of the tunnels.