VANCOUVER -- There’s no question that the hodgepodge of gardens along CP Rail’s Arbutus corridor are charming and no doubt that homeowners prefer gardens and a leafy walkway to trains.

But are Vancouverites willing to pay $100 million for it? Because that’s how much Canadian Pacific Railway wants for the 66-foot-wide right-of-way that runs for 11 kilometres from the Fraser River almost to False Creek.

Sources familiar with the negotiations confirmed that there is an $80-million gap between what the railway wants and what the city has offered. The vast discrepancy between how the railway and the city value the land is like chalk and cheese and reflects two completely different views of the land’s value.

It’s zoned as a transportation corridor, which is how the city reached its evaluation. It’s likely that the assessment took into account the fact that four years ago, the City of Richmond bought 14.5 acres of the old interurban line from CP Rail for $5 million.

But, because the Arbutus corridor cuts through some of the most expensive residential property in Canada, CP believes it’s worth five times more than what the city has offered to pay.

It’s been 13 years since the last train ran down the line. CP has been pretty patient. After all, hosting everything from gardens to used car dealerships for no benefit doesn’t exactly fit any corporate strategy, let alone that of a company with a CEO mandated to shed costs and wasted assets in its drive to maximize shareholder profits.

CP denies that the timing of the squatter gardener evictions on July 31 is anything but coincidental. But even if it is intentional, the railway deserves at least grudging credit for cleverness.

Three-and-a-half months before a civic election, how better to get politicians’ attention than to have citizens raising the stakes by confronting city council with a petition signed by more than 4,000 people and heartwarming videos and photos of straw-hatted mothers gardening with their daughters and retirees walking the tracks?

For politicians, it’s a bit of a nightmare.

Consider how generous taxpayers may feel toward one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, a community that already has more green space than most others and where, little more than a decade ago, resident Pamela Sauder declared herself and her neighbours to be Vancouver’s “crème de la crème.”

Consider that the Vision-dominated council’s top priority is ending homelessness. This year, it allocated $16.6 million in its capital budget toward that.

Do the arithmetic. Mayor Gregor Robertson and his colleagues are being asked to spend six times that amount to preserve the Arbutus corridor.

Homes for the homeless or parks for the privileged? That’s how any agreement would likely be spun by at least a couple of Vision’s competitors.

As for CP, images of the wanton destruction of vegetable patches just before harvest or trains navigating through posh neighbourhoods are unlikely to puncture the resolve of E. Hunter Harrison. He may not be meaner than a junkyard dog, but Harrison’s not a man to back away from a fight. He came out of retirement in 2012 to turn around the worst-performing railroad on the continent and maximizing full value of existing and anticipated surplus real estate holdings was among the goals he highlighted soon after his appointment.