Learning About Abandoned Spaces Part 3

The railway tracks along Arbutus Street that lay idle for years

Our last stop on the photo walk was a neglected railway track near the entrance to Granville Island. It was part of a track that ran from False Creek, where there were factories, to the Pacific Central Station to transport the goods elsewhere in British Columbia or outside the province.

Pedestrians and cyclists use the Arbutus Greenway

There is also another railway that used to run parallel to Arbutus Street that was nicknamed "the Sockeye express" or "Sockeye special", where trains ferried salmon from Steveston in Richmond, all the way into Vancouver, up the second Granville Street Bridge (demolished in 1954), and into downtown, at the intersection of David and Richards. The same train line was used to carry fresh milk and spring water too.

I remember as a kid my brother and I would leave pennies on the railway track and after the train ran by we would collect the stretched pennies, still hot to the touch. That train stopped running in 2001 and was unused for a long time. 

There were calls to turn it into a pedestrian and bike path and in 2016 the City of Vancouver bought it from the Canadian Pacific Railway for C$55 million. The tracks were taken out and the path was blacktopped. Today people can walk or ride leisurely along the path, now called the Arbutus Greenway, from West 5th Avenue and Fir all the way south to East Boulevard and Southwest Marine.

Which takes us back to the unused track at False Creek. It was used during the 2010 Olympics to transport passengers from Olympic Station to Granville Island on a replica street car for exactly 60 days. After the international sporting event was over, so was the railway track at a cost of C$8.5 million.

Can the rail track at Granville Island be revived?

A local heritage group is hoping to gather enough interest in it to revive the use of the track by putting a street car on it; there would be more foot traffic to Granville Island and Olympic Village, not only by residents but also tourists too.