The line runs from the North Shore, along the cliffs of Howe Sound, through Squamish and up to Whistler. It was engineered a century ago and the public never stopped owning the ground beneath it. In July 2026 the Province committed to keeping the corridor in public hands and pointedly did not commit to a use: the line “could support future goods movement,” it said, provided commercially viable operations can be established. None has appeared in six years. A trail is the purpose that pays the public back. Sixty five kilometres of the corridor, Squamish to Whistler, sits inside CN's discontinuance filing and can be secured this year. The rest follows.
The land has belonged to British Columbians all along; BC Rail was leased, never sold. CN has walked away from the line north of Squamish and the federal process is running. Its filing reaches all the way to 100 Mile House; phase one concerns the 65 km of it between Squamish and Whistler, where the public case is strongest and the freight case weakest. Every step below is fixed in law.
CN quietly halts all freight north of Squamish. No customers remain. The line sits idle, used only to store railcars.
CN files formal notice to discontinue the line, writing that traffic volumes are “far below levels needed to maintain the lines.”
The corridor’s MP and MLA jointly urge the Prime Minister and Premier to build a business case for public acquisition.
The federal process advances: CN may now advertise the line to other rail operators, with a minimum sixty day window.
The Province commits to keeping the Squamish to 100 Mile House corridor in public hands — and leans toward freight. The line “could support future goods movement, strengthen supply chains, connect communities,” it says, “provided commercially viable operations can be established.” No such operation exists or has been proposed for the Sea to Sky. That proviso is where the trail must win.We are here
The operator advertising window closes; negotiations with any interested rail operator can run into spring 2027.
If no operator takes the line, CN must offer its remaining interest to governments at net salvage value — likely nominal, since the Province already owns the land. The federal minister gets sixty days to accept; the Province, transit authorities and each municipality along the route get thirty.
The corridor’s use is set. Whatever is decided in the next twelve months will be very hard to undo.
The finished thing is a hundred and twenty kilometres of car free, gentle grade from Burrard Inlet to 670 metres at Whistler Village — cliff edges above Howe Sound, trestles over the water, lit tunnels through Cheakamus Canyon, Brandywine Falls, terrain a car on Highway 99 can only blur past. The right of way hands us what new trails never get: surveyed alignment, bridges already built, tunnels already bored, grades a child can ride. It arrives in two phases because the corridor has two legal situations, and pretending otherwise is how proposals get dismissed. Phase one, Squamish to Whistler, is the section CN is giving up now — buildable on its own and a destination on its own. Phase two, the Howe Sound coast and the North Shore, runs beside the working freight line to Squamish Terminals and needs a shared corridor agreement, not a discontinuance. Designed with the Squamish Nation and Lil'wat Nation as partners from day one, and engineered so a future excursion train on key sections stays possible without redesign.
The service hub: downtown connection, the West Coast Railway Heritage Park, the Chief at the doorstep, food, rentals, transit and shuttles. Squamish becomes the trail’s capital.
Kettle Valley style compacted gravel through Cheakamus Canyon, lit tunnel passages, restored trestles, Brandywine Falls, ending on Whistler’s Valley Trail network. Four seasons: ride, run, walk, snowshoe.
The most spectacular section — crushed limestone along the fjord, viewpoint decks over the water, trestles kept as trail highlights. This is the working line to Squamish Terminals and is not part of CN's discontinuance. A trail here means a shared corridor agreement with the operator, not an abandoned one. Worth doing, and a separate negotiation.
North and West Vancouver. Paved, planted, High Line inspired: original track embedded in the surface, public art marking the 1914 railway, connections at Capilano, Lions Gate and the Horseshoe Bay ferry. Also on the working line — the same shared corridor question, in the densest and most valuable part of it.
Strip away the process and the corridor question is simple: what would 120 continuous kilometres of car free, gentle grade actually do for the people who live here? More than any other use on the table — and for more of them.
Highway 99 is one of BC's most dangerous roads, and today it is the only way through the corridor. The greenway is a second way — separated, gentle, engineered — where a ten year old can ride from Lions Bay to Horseshoe Bay and a Squamish commuter can skip the drive.
Trail visitors are the best kind of tourist: they arrive slowly, stay locally and spend in small places. One section of BC's own Kettle Valley trail was measured at 107,000 trips and $18.7M of direct spending in a single year — in terrain with a fraction of the Sea to Sky's traffic.
The rail bench passes the best of Howe Sound — cliff edges, trestle crossings, canyon walls, Brandywine — terrain a car on the highway can only blur past. Viewpoint decks and kept trestles turn a century of engineering into the best long walk in the province.
The property literature on urban greenways is large and consistent in direction: proximity to a maintained trail carries a premium, typically reported in the high single digits to mid teens as a percentage. That swing funds municipal budgets without raising a tax rate — and Section 8 of the report ring fences a share of it for affordable housing, because the same effect is what displaces people if nobody plans for it.
Between Squamish and Whistler the corridor serves no industrial site, no mill, no mine, no farm. Every historic shipper has closed or rerouted. Any future for this line is therefore a choice about public benefit — and the three candidates are not close.
Verdict — a use the market already abandoned
Verdict — a heavy bet taxpayers keep losing
Verdict — the best public use of the asset
Greenways stall on acquisition: buying a linear strip through settled country is ruinously expensive. Here the Province already owns the land, and the federal process delivers CN’s residual interest at net salvage value — expected by independent legal analysis to be nominal, since there is no land for CN to sell and no market for the line as a railway.
The shapes alone decide it. Rail costs compound: $150M to $300M or more of rehabilitation before the first passenger, then the overruns large rail projects reliably produce, then a subsidy every year, forever. A trail is built once, its maintenance endowed, and the returns start the year it opens.
Rail corridor conversions usually die in courtrooms and land negotiations. This one cannot, because of a fact most people have never heard: when BC Rail was “sold” under the 2003 Revitalization Agreement, the land was never sold. CN bought a long operating lease; the ground under every kilometre of track stayed with a provincial Crown corporation. Three layers, and only the top one is actually in play.
The 2003 agreement carries an option over the corridor land at nominal consideration once the line is discontinued. If that option is ever exercised in CN's favour — even carelessly, as housekeeping — the land passes out of public hands and every public outcome is foreclosed at once, trail and rail alike. The July 2026 commitment to public ownership closes this door if it is kept. It must be kept.
The same agreement obliges CN to preserve the rail infrastructure while the process runs — bridges, trestles and track cannot simply be salvaged for scrap in the meantime. That obligation is what keeps a century of engineering intact long enough for the public to decide what it becomes.
So the whole legal path is four unglamorous acts: keep the ownership promise, hold CN to preservation, say yes inside the thirty day window the Province gets in 2027, and hand stewardship to a public body. Everything hard about this was done by 1956. What remains is a decision.
Promenade Plantée
The originalrail viaduct to city garden
Proved industrial rail character should be kept, not erased — the arches below now house artisan workshops.
The High Line
~$2Bprivate investment within two blocks, city estimate
Saved by a citizens’ group founded a decade before opening day. Larger figures get quoted for the High Line; they fold in Hudson Yards, which had its own drivers. The conservative number is enough.
Kettle Valley Rail Trail
$24M/yrmeasured impact, one section, 107,000 trips
BC’s own proof: nominal acquisition, rail trail build rates, real measured return. Also BC’s own warning — a flood damaged section is being decommissioned for want of a capital reserve.
Otago Central Rail Trail
Rural revivalthe mountain valley model
Turned a dead branch line into the anchor of a regional tourism economy — the closest cousin to Squamish–Whistler.
Because of why it is coming out. In November 2021 an atmospheric river damaged the Kettle Valley in more than sixty places. In February 2026 the Province chose to decommission the 67 kilometres between Princeton and the Coldwater River for about $20 million rather than pay several times that to repair it. It is the first permanent break in the Trans Canada Trail, and it happened because nobody had set aside a dollar for the day the weather came.
That is an argument against building public infrastructure with no capital reserve, not against trails — the same storm on a working railway would have produced the same bill. It is why this proposal treats a funded maintenance and resilience endowment as part of the capital cost rather than a line item to trim at the end. And the other half of the lesson is that the Kettle Valley works: measured in 2025, its Penticton to Kelowna section carried 107,000 trips and $18.7M of direct visitor spending in one year, in terrain a fraction as spectacular as Howe Sound.
No — the corridor stays public and intact either way, and the trail is designed so key sections can host excursion rail without redesign. What the trail refuses to do is wait. Passenger rail here faces $150M to $300M of track rehabilitation before a single coach or station is bought, a permanent operating subsidy, and geometry that held historic trains to about 40 km/h; a train fast enough to beat the highway means realignment through the canyon and a bill in the billions. If that business case ever closes, the publicly owned corridor will still be there.
What must not happen is the Vancouver Island pattern: decades of “study passenger rail first,” no trains, and a corridor that rots while taxpayers hold the file. A trail opens in years, costs a fraction, and forecloses nothing.
Two separate things. The working railway from North Vancouver to Squamish Terminals is not being discontinued, is not part of phase one, and nothing here touches its operation. Phase one begins where CN’s filing begins: at Squamish.
The other freight question is real. CN’s filing runs to 100 Mile House, and discontinuance pushes Interior shipments onto the Fraser Canyon. But that is not a case for trains between Squamish and Whistler — it is a case for a corridor that stays public with its rail bed intact, which is exactly what this proposal asks the Province to secure. A trail on a preserved bench keeps that option alive and is the only use that returns anything while the question is open.
Because those are different legal problems and lumping them together is how proposals lose credibility. Squamish to Whistler is inside CN's discontinuance filing and can be secured through a process already running on a published timetable. The North Shore and Howe Sound sections sit on an operating freight line: a trail there requires a shared corridor agreement with the operator, which is worth pursuing and is a separate negotiation on a separate clock. North of Whistler, Pemberton and beyond are in the same filing as phase one and could extend the trail considerably — this proposal takes no position on how far, because that is a question for the communities along it.
Potentially as a partner, not an opponent. A seasonal excursion operator needs the track a few months a year, a few trains a week. A shared model — excursion rail on select sections, trail alongside, access fees contributing to maintenance — has precedent on the Kettle Valley and should be examined in a joint feasibility study before any exclusive arrangement is signed.
It can — Chicago’s 606 raised nearby values 30 to 48 percent and displaced residents, and Squamish is already in an affordability crisis. That is why this proposal treats housing protection as a binding condition, not a footnote: a ring fenced fund capturing a share of trail driven property tax growth for affordable housing in Squamish, land trust designations on surplus corridor land, and public displacement monitoring with triggers. Build the safeguard into the governance before the first metre of trail.
The Province owns the corridor through its existing Crown corporation, as it does today. An arms length greenway society — municipalities, the Squamish Nation and Lil'wat Nation as design partners from inception, trail communities, and tourism operators — stewards design, construction and the maintenance endowment. Both nations hold direct interests here; the Squamish Nation has communities living metres from active track and has litigated over its impacts. Partnership is the foundation, not a consultation box.
In the report, labelled as what they are. Section 6 carries an order of magnitude range — $48M to $78M for the full 120 km — built by applying published Arbutus and Kettle Valley construction rates to this corridor, with the method shown so it can be checked. What you will not find is a precise figure dressed up as a budget.
The restraint is deliberate: the moment a campaign leads with its own construction number, that number becomes the story. The trail’s real price should come from a public feasibility study pricing trail and rail on the same page. That study is this site’s first ask, because the comparison, priced by anyone, only goes one way.
Decisions like this are made by whoever shows up in the file. Industry arrives with lobbyists; residents arrive as a number, and right now that number is zero. Leave an address and you become part of the count that gets quoted when the corridor is decided. That is all it is for. Expect no newsletter.
Every item below is cheap, reversible, and preserves every option. None commits the Province to a use. They simply stop the corridor being decided by default, in private, before the public case has been heard.