The group calling for the relocation of the Côte-St-Luc rail yards is getting some help from McGill university students to lobby the rail companies and different levels of government.
Five Masters students from McGill's School of Urban Planning have volunteered to prepare feasibility studies and a strategic plan to remove the rail yards, decontaminate the land and redevelop it.
The CP and CN rail yards. located east of Highway 13 and north of Highway 20, take up over 50 million square feet of land and about one-third of the city of Côte-St-Luc.
Ex-Côte-St-Luc mayor Robert Libman started up the Coalition for the Relocation of the St-Luc Rail yards over the summer, prompted by complaints about the noise and pollution from the trains as well as concerns about rail safety. Libman said the rail yards are also "currently stifling the urban planning and economic development potential of Montreal."
"It just makes sense from an urban planning point of view to have Montreal develop, densify towards its middle as opposed to spreading out off-island. Urban sprawl is a big challenge that every municipality faces, and the fact that we have this massive area right in the heart of the city, I think in 2016 it's worth exploring whether or not we should develop that in a more efficient, denser fashion than with rail yards," Libman told a news conference.
The studies should be ready by February.
"If we present a project of this nature to CN and CP, for example, you can be sure that they'll bring in their own urban planning teams to examine and explore and analyze and dissect the project. We feel it's a starting basis. The objective is to show the powers that be that this could be a positive project," said Libman.
Libman said that the coalition is made up of about 150 members so far and a petition has garnered "hundreds of signatures."
Libman said CP has told them they were open to the idea but they have not yet approached CN.