Vancouver British Columbia - The Canadian Pacific Railway has agreed to temporarily stop clearing gardens off its Arbutus Corridor, just as it was preparing to demolish encroaching gardens adjacent to city-owned community gardens in Kerrisdale.
 
Officials at Vancouver City Hall and CP issued nearly identical statements Wednesday saying they had agreed to meet to discuss the 11-kilometre corridor.
 
"CP willingly participates in these meetings and is hopeful a resolution may be reached. In acknowledgment of this, CP will suspend any track maintenance work along the corridor for the next two to three weeks," CP's Breanne Feigel said in the statement.
 
"If a reasonable solution has not been found in this time frame, CP will resume work in preparation for rail operations."
 
City officials say the two sides have agreed not to talk to media about their negotiations.
 
The meetings come after CP began acting on its threat to remove unauthorized encroachments on its long-unused Arbutus right-of-way, including community gardens that had spilled beyond their boundaries.
 
CP and the city have been in a decade-long dispute over the corridor, once a vibrant interurban railway line between False Creek and Steveston in Richmond.
 
The railway company stopped maintaining the right-of-way after it lost a case in the Supreme Court of Canada against the city for zoning the line for public transportation and green purposes.
 
The city offered to buy the line for $20 million, saying the price was based on market value.
 
However, CP wanted to develop a mix of housing on the land and argued it is worth much more, with estimates in the $100-million range.
 
Vancouver's offer was based in part on the $5 million that Richmond paid for six acres of the False Creek-Steveston corridor in 2010.
 
The corridor along Arbutus in Vancouver comprises about 18 hectares.
 
Earlier this year, CP gave notice to residents and businesses adjacent to the line that it was restarting rail operations and required them to remove any encroachments off its land.
 
At the beginning of August, it started ripping up several "guerrilla gardens" on its tracks near Southeast Marine Drive, and was moving north along the line toward more established gardens.
 
Mayor Gregor Robertson considered it an attempt to "bully" the city into paying a higher price for the land, noting there was no economic justification for running trains on the track today.
 
CP insists its right to use the line for rail operations was enshrined in the Supreme Court decision, and that it needs the railway for various uses, including training and storage of excess rail cars.

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