I haven’t posted in awhile, but over the next couple of days it should resume. Next week I’ll also be on an extended holiday where there is zero chance of posting so the next month in general will be light.
For those of you that were there the last weekend, thank you for being present. It means a lot.
The City Chase is an urban scavenger hunt where you look for miscellaneous objectives in and near the downtown core. The relevant skills are to be able to quickly map clues to locations on maps and determine the quickest way to complete 10 tasks (called ‘chase points’). Each of the chase points were in different locations in the city and you could only use public transportation or your own two feet to get from point to point. Some of the chase points are mandatory. Teams are in groups of two people. They were segregated into two categories – one category was teams consisting of two females, the other category was ‘anybody else’. The reason for this differentiation was unclear but apparently there was a prize for the top performer in each category, and the top prize in any category also got an entrance to the national citychase competition.
This was conducted on May 12 and I participated as a contestant after one of my friends was looking for a partner and he informed me of the event. As my teammate was much more physically fit than I am, I expressed some apprehension. Although I was still relatively (relative to my own physical history) in good shape after the last Sun Run, he wanted me for the ‘brainy’ parts of the challenge. I agreed anyway. The cost was $150 per team (so $75 a head) so it wasn’t a trivial decision. As they managed to get close to their 300 team limit it looks like the event coordinators priced the event correctly (as I suspect they had it for capacity control reasons rather than a primary source of revenue).
The day started at around 9:00am at Nelson Square in downtown Vancouver. There were about 300 teams, and each team received two shirts (made of the coolmax-type material – very useful), a day-pass for Translink, pedometers, a disposable razor (in case if you needed to shave during the race?) and some other trivial stuff. The demographic of the people can roughly be described as the young (19 to 30) age group, which isn’t surprising considering the nature of the event. I would also estimate that about 60% of the people there were female.
At around 9:30am, there was some guy on the stage telling people the basic rules and getting people to stretch. The race formally started at 10:00am, but by around 9:50am, the game had started.
The first challenge was for teams with the last digit of their bibs to try to stand in line together. The teams that did that the best got first dibs on receiving a sheet of paper with chase points. They determined this by giving teams a minute to get in line, and then the person on the stage asked people with the last digit of “x” to raise their hands. The numbers with the most coherency in their line were sent off. Our group was second off the bat and we received the paper with chase points.
I anticipate the vast majority of people visiting this page will want the following documents to get an idea of what the tasks are:
Citychase Vancouver Chase Points Page 1 – Page 2
I believe the event organizers give out the papers in red to prevent photocopying, but with digital imaging techniques, as you can see, it was a rather pointless exercise.
Note you had to complete #3, #8 and #16 (mandatory chase points), and one of #2, #19, #20 (conservation chase points), and one of #9 or #11 (community chase points), and ten in total.
The strategy initially conceived was that spending five minutes figuring out where the chase points were would be much better than scurrying off to the first thing on the sheet of paper. Essentially the clues were so obvious that it required a phone call to a very trustworthy friend (thank you Raven!) to get him to type in the proper names into Google so that way he can spit out an address which I can then map. Before the day even began, I had printed up a few maps with strategically located Translink routes (with frequencies) that basically saved us a lot of time. I scanned the maps and printed them here:
I indicated most of the chase points with black numbers and circles around them. I also marked “M” as mandatory points. Some of the black circles are crossed out, and that was done during the race as I was making mental notes on what the optimal path would be. We inevitably ended up doing chase points (in order) 2, 1, 5, 4, 3(M), 11, 14, 16(M), 18, 8(M).
We quickly determined there were a lot of chase points in Kitsalano (including the mandatory one) and this required us to take the 2/22 bus through the Burrard Street Bridge. We ran there and managed to catch a bus just before it got full (mostly of other people wearing citychase outfits). While waiting for the bus and while on the bus, I compiled together the rest of the chase point locations and realized that there were three critical (mandatory) points – Kits, Stanley Park and south of the Cambie Street Bridge. In the time it would take us to do Kits, we could figure out the optimal route for the rest of it. Kits contained 5 chase points and this was half the race already.
We got off on the first exit from the Burrard Street Bridge. I looked to see where the people were running (either they were heading north to the Planetarium or east to the Molson building) and went totally in the opposite direction – south. This was a minority game theory-type decision in that we were warned that some chase points might be crowded and we’d have to wait in queue and I didn’t want any of that. We were the only ones running uphill to 4th avenue (and my teammate was asking me whether I was sure this was the right location) and west a few blocks (to Yew St.) where the first chase point (#2, conservation chase point) was at a travel agency.
They had three computers hooked up to the internet and they gave you a brochure about some program helping kids somewhere (my partner read the brochure). You had to answer two questions about that, and for the third question you had to use the internet to find out how much CO2 a round trip to Costa Rica takes and how much it costs to offset that if you are buying carbon offsets. The person that used the internet terminal before me didn’t even bother to close the browser so the answer was right in front of me. When I left I closed the browser. I found this chase point quite dull, and didn’t do much to educate me in the ways of carbon trading.
The second chase point (#1) was going to a dog treat store and they had a selection of 6 treats – you had to roll a die and had to eat the indicated treat with your mouth only. I (and also coincidentally, my teammate) rolled a 3 and got a very dry dog treat. Because it involved running significantly to get to this point from the bus stop, my mouth was pretty dry and they didn’t allow you to wash it down with water. I seriously wondered if pets actually like this stuff if humans don’t.
The third chase point (#5) involved running downhill to the Molson building where you had to stack 6 beer canisters in a pyramid and to disassemble it with beer goggles (essentially goggles that have been smeared with some muck to make vision difficult). This was straight-forward and a very dull event.
The fourth chase point (#4) involved going to the Vancouver Museum (right inside the Planetarium building) and answering five questions out of a possible 20. They gave you a palm-pilot type device to take pictures and/or video with to help answer some of the questions. The exhibit they had was on the history of Vancouver and some of the questions were pretty exact in terms of the exhibits. This took a bit of time (I would say about 10 minutes) to orient ourselves and to find the answers to some of the questions. There was a lot of information to digest during this chase point, and considering the sheer amount of adrenaline (involved in running from place to place) and the time pressure, I rather liked this chase point. It also made me realize that I should go visit the place again when I have an afternoon to blow to learn more about the history of Vancouver.
The fifth chase point (#3, mandatory) was at Kits beach. It was a two or three minute run from the planetarium and involved in getting together with another team to walk on long wooden skis. The trick was that each team had to lift their left/right leg up at the same time in order to move forward so it was just a matter of getting the rhythm correct. This was a rather straight forward event and I was glad that the team we got with us had their act together.
Apparently there was a car caravaning people between the #3 and #8 (south of the Cambie Street Bridge) chase points, but this car was nowhere to be seen. Also, we picked up a package of 3 13 watt compact fluorescent bulbs.
We made our way to the bus stop on Cornwall and had to wait a good eight minutes before we got a bus. We needed to get north of the Burrard Street Bridge and although we could have run it, it would have been too exhausting for the rest of the trip. It was also at this time that I noticed I lost my bus pass, but fortunately the bus drivers didn’t check me as they recognized I was wearing the right uniform (and I just pointed my finger to my teammate who still fortunately had his own bus pass). This wasn’t a problem for the duration of the race, but I easily could have seen it as a problem (although I had a bunch of one-zone passes just in case of such an event).
The sixth chase point (#11, community) was at the IGA in the middle of downtown Vancouver. We were given 10 paperclips and were told that we had to sell them to people and collect $15. Then with the cash we got by selling the paper clips, we would buy IGA-store brand food and then donate it to the food bank (there was a table sitting outside). The only trick was that we could not use our own money to buy the food. I immediately was skeptical as to our own ability to do this, being a downtown Vancouver location and also that there were other teams there hustling up the store, but my teammate went in and did a fantastic job of selling $9.65 worth of paperclips before we exhausted the store. He demonstrated excellent tact and I was absolutely amazed he raised that amount. It was this time that we went outside and asked the guy that gave us the paperclips if he had any pointers considering the store was already hit up, and he suggested the streets outside. I then asked whether we could just sell the paperclips to other teams and he said that was allowed. We quickly found another team and swapped some cash and paperclips and that satisfied the requirement.
At this point that there was no way that the $15 to buy food could be audited. Although they got you to provide receipts, I would not be shocked to see that most teams with very low times just used their own cash or quickly sold the clips to another team for 15 bucks and left there. This chase point took about 20 to 25 minutes of time for us to perform and it was amazing that we got an “organic” amount of money from various people, all mainly due to my teammate’s work.
The seventh chase point (#14) was at Charleston Park, on the shoreline west of Canada Place. We ran to this point from IGA and discovered it was a stunt where you had to throw a ball inside a nylon stocking in a hoop. The other teammate had to throw the same nylon stocking and ball using just your head into a hoop. It was a very trivial chase point and quite pointless. We quickly got out of there and hopped onto the #19 trolley bus to head to Stanley Park.
The eighth chase point (#16, mandatory) was near the totem poles in Stanley Park. In order to get to this point from the closest bus stop involved a rather long run. We managed to hoof it, but by this point I was getting rather tired and had to take periodic walking breaks. Not helping the situation was noticing other competitors on bicycles (which they obtained on chase point 15) which made us realize we chose the wrong order to do this point, but we trudged along the old fashioned way. We finally reached the totem poles (after passing a cricket game) and this chase point involved arranging a set of about 20 nails and getting them to balance on top of a nail. They gave you a photocopy as a schematic and essentially it was a manual dexterity problem. It was a well thought out problem because it greatly helped if your teammate knew how to assist with the primary person doing the trick. We quickly did this and made the long run back from Stanley Park to the south side of the Lost Lagoon. We were tempted to steal a couple of bicycles that were parked there, but of course did not.
The ninth chase point (#18), after a very long run to Lost Lagoon, involved throwing tires on top of poles. It was so mind-boggling stupid that it doesn’t deserve much further comment other than that we got quickly out of there and headed to Georgia street to catch the bus that would take us to Cambie Street (where we would transfer onto another bus to actually take us there).
The tenth chase point (#8, mandatory) was on the south side of the Cambie Street Bridge. As most people know, the bridge is single lane because of the Canada Line construction, so the bus let us off on the last stop on the north side of the bridge. We ran across the bridge (which reminded me of the Sun Run) and down a staircase to a beachy area that consisted of multiple volleyball nets. This chase point consisted of playing a game of volleyball and scoring 10 points for each side. We just served some balls to a couple other competitors (some rather attractive women) but they didn’t play volleyball so it was kind of lame.
We then ran all the way back to Nelson Square and managed to clock a time of roughly 3 hours and 44 minutes. There were tons of people already at the finish line and we had no preconceptions that we weren’t finishing in the top ten. Little did we guess that we finished just under 50th percentile. We quickly got a free beer and then took off.
After the competition, we had some food elsewhere and talked about it. On the plus side, it had one great moment – the first 15 minutes after getting your clue sheet. They also managed to have the necessary amount of volunteers to make such an event work with the various chase points so they appeared to be organizationally sound.
On the negative side, the lack of challenge in the events was hugely disappointing. There was only one chase point we did, the Vancouver Museum, which involved any feel of ‘adventure’ and a non-contrived objective. I was expecting a much more difficult event, especially considering that in the previous year only half the teams managed to complete 10 chase points. Maybe we just picked “bad” (i.e. excessively stupid) chase points. This year almost everybody completed 10 chase points. The clues on the chase point sheet were too linear and obvious. There was little intellectual challenge in the competition. Most of the logistical challenges (such as navigating the bus system) could be solved in the first 15 minutes which didn’t provide enough time-constraint stress. Also, the usage of public transit was very limited – there were only a couple buses that you really needed to take to get to where you needed to be. There was nothing in parts of the city that would have required Skytrain or Seabus usage, and this was a contingency I was planning for.
I also wonder about the last-second main sponsor switch – the event for the past few years was called the Bell Citychase, but they changed their sponsor about three days before the Vancouver race to the Mitsubishi Citychase. I wonder what type of falling out the event organizers had with Bell Canada. I also wonder what impact this may have had with the quality of chase points.
Finally, there is the huge negative of cheating. In particular, chase point 19 involves swapping your CFL bulbs with somebody else’s incandescent bulbs and returning them to a mandatory chase point. Countless teams just bought the incandescent bulbs and handed them in. Likewise, chase point 20 involved returning 20 cans or plastic bottles for recycling at a mandatory chase point. Suffice to say it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to get this one performed quickly. These were two (of three) “Conservation” chase points, where you had to complete at least one in order to complete the game. The irony of the conservation, of course, is that the optimal way for people to complete them is to just buy the items, which complete defeats the “environmental responsibility” intent of the race.
For the IGA chase point (#11), the lack of auditing (making sure that you weren’t spending your own money) and also the fact that you could sell clips to other competitors defeated the purpose of this chase point. While selling clips with other competitors wasn’t against the rules, I’m sure the intent was otherwise.
The most blatant way of cheating in the competition would be to buy a hole punch with multiple patterns (stars, circles, etc.) and punch out the appropriate numbers on your bib after discovering what the correct pattern is by looking at teams that have completed the relevant chase points.
Let’s just say that if the city chase wants to achieve any sort of credibility, they will have to tighten up their audit procedures. When they start offering prizes of non-trivial value, you can be pretty sure that people will take “extraordinary measures” to ensure that they are competitive.
The winning team completed the race in 1 hour and 56 minutes and I would highly suspect that they took a massive shortcut in getting their incandescent bulbs or their empty pop cans. They also very likely got on their bikes on chase point 15 and leveraged them to the maximum – apparently you were allowed to use them for up to 45 minutes which is a huge amount of time. They might have found the “car” that took you from the Cambie Street Bridge to Kits. It also defeats the purpose of having the race on foot or public transportation when there are mechanisms that are so unbalancing – it becomes a race to find the disproportionately strong items.
Although we entered this race with the knowledge that we weren’t going to come in first, we wanted to have fun and pull in a good performance. Unfortunately we have no benchmark relative to the competition – we could have easily erased half an hour off our time if we took less scrupulous measures during the competition. It was this design flaw, the lack of auditing, that really left a sour taste in my mouth. Maybe that was part of the game?
Thus, my overall impression of the event was mediocre. I would not do this event again, nor would I recommend it to others for the price they are asking.
Finally, if anybody organizing this event is reading this and would like to utilize me as a consultant to make the race better while being cognisant of the logistical and resource difficulties at hand, my contact information is not difficult to find.
I would just like to make a quick supplemental response to Alex about Gonzales (I’m equally short on the June contracts and if the later dates are still trading at ridiculously high levels (e.g. 50% or above) I will be parlaying it into those months as well) that the upcoming non-confidence vote in the Senate is irrelevant legally. I think the Democrats in the Senate are mistaking it for a parliamentary system. Essentially after Gonzales got confirmed he is in until either he or Bush says that he’s out.
Now there is a legal procedure that can be performed – Congress (specifically the House) can impeach Gonzales with a simple majority. The house doesn’t need an excuse as the requirement is “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”, and they will claim the misdemeanors part. But even after impeachment, Gonzales will have to be tried in front of the Senate and the Senate needs a 2/3rds vote to impeach, and you can be sure that the Republicans that have been calling for the resignation won’t be voting for impeachment since they’ll be chopping off their own legs when it comes to electoral support in the next vote.
The point is that Gonzales is here to stay. When the Democrats took congress, their silent goal was to impeach Bush and Cheney, and they still want to do that. Instead, they’re settling for Gonzales as an interim goal before they work their way up the executive food chain. Bush and company know this and know if they turf Gonzales then it just a break in the dam that will continue to get wider until the whole place floods.
… when coming back from Point Roberts today with another batch of items of “a biological nature”, there was an attractive young lady that was standing outside the initial booth. Upon discovering what I was carrying, she immediately gave me the questions (“do you have more than $10,000 of currency?”, etc.) and told me to park in the lot for a secondary inspection. The guy at customs doing the secondary searching actually recognized me (being the same fellow that did the search the last week) and said, “More of these? Are you expecting any more?” and I indicated to him that there would be another batch next week sometime.
I got waived through without him bothering to search me and without paying any duties (albeit on a much lower amount this time).
So a couple questions I have on my mind is the following – is it a good or bad thing that you’ve been through customs so many times that they recognize you? I would think it’s a good thing. The other question is: Is Point Roberts the station where the youngest customs people get stationed to? I’d say Point Roberts is a much nicer area to get stationed than some middle-of-nowhere location like Willow Creek, Saskatchewan.
I am serious when I say master politician and not sarcastic. Anybody following the political media in Canada knows that the Party Quebecois (PQ, provincial party with a mandate to get Quebec out of Canada) had their leader resign. The rumour was that the Bloc Quebecois (BQ, federal party with a mandate to get Quebec out of Canada, very closely aligned politically with the PQ) leader, Gilles Duceppe, would announce that he would enter the leadership race for the PQ. Duceppe announced his entry into the race, implying that he will leave the BQ leadership post. During the same day, Pauline Marois, a very popular politician on the PQ side announced her entry into the race. The subsequent day, Gilles Duceppe announced that he will no longer be interested in the PQ leadership.
A lot of the media are calling this a “flip-flop”, damaging, Hedy Fry, etc. In fact, Gilles Duceppe probably saved the separatist movement 10 years of political time with his decision to withdraw. To his credit, Duceppe probably realized that he would have a very tough battle on his hands, but that the battle would fracture the support groups for the BQ/PQ and this was the relevant component of the decision. In other words, while he realized he was probably going to face an uphill battle, he also took one for the team.
To use a poker analogy, most people have a difficult time of folding a hand after they have put some money into the pot. The incorrect line of thinking is “Now that I have this much money in the pot, I can’t afford to lose it and let go now”. The correct line of thinking is that the money in the pot is “not yours” and only your future capital outlay (whether it be money or political) is relevant. Gilles Duceppe realized he was in this type of situation – he was playing poker, put a bet on the table and was raised by Marois. Duceppe realized that he had a good hand, but he wasn’t going to win this one and he folded. Smart, smart decision. If you wanted an example of a politician that couldn’t fold his hand and take his losses, try looking up Saddam Hussein in 1990.
By far and away the most effective politician in Ottawa over the past 17 years has been Gilles Duceppe. He still can think clearly and with decisions like this one, he still can prove it. If you look at all the concessions Ottawa has given to Quebec over this period of time as a barometer, the Bloc has been the most effective political party in Canadian politics in terms of delivering the bacon to the people.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but if I wasn’t involved in something rather unique last Saturday (a post is coming) I would have written down on a post here that Duceppe wouldn’t enter into the race. I would have also had money at stake if there was an appropriate prediction market, but alas, Canadian politics is not on the radar of a lot of people.
This is a one-sentence quotation (and the next paragraph was from information that I mentioned) in the Richmond Review.
Sacha Peter, chair of the candidate nomination committee for the local constituency association, said that due to logistical reasons, such as securing a venue, he couldn’t confirm a date.
“We’re certainly aiming for (Sunday, June 24),” Peter told The Richmond Review.
The deadline for signing up new members has been set for May 29, which coincides with the last day new candidates can register.
I also told Martin van den Hemel that the June 24th date is “not 100%”. In theory it can be held on June 19 or later, but weekends are preferred because people are available to cast ballots.
I found this first-hand description, The Dangerousness of Mercury Vapor, published in 1926 to be rather interesting. I was trying to look up what Mercury smelled like – you can read in literature that cyanide smells like bitter almonds (if you have the genes – 60% of the population can smell it).
Apparently mercury vapour is odourless.
Provincial: http://www.sbr.gov.bc.ca/ctb/publications/bulletins/mft_005.pdf
Federal: http://www.fin.gc.ca/toce/2006/gas_tax-e.html
Summary: In the GVRD (West Vancouver/Delta to Langley/Maple Ridge), gas taxes are 20.5 cents per litre. Elsewhere in the province (except Victoria), gas taxes are 14.5 cents per litre. This is why gas is cheaper in Abbotsford than it is in Vancouver.
Federally, gas taxes are 10 cents per litre, plus the 6% GST levied on all costs up to and including the gas taxes.
Currently, I see a price of a litre of gasoline for $1.23/litre in Vancouver. What this leaves is the following:
GST: 7 cents
Federal tax: 10 cents
Provincial taxes: 20.5 cents
Total taxes: 37.5 cents per litre, or about 30% of the total cost of the gasoline.
USA Federal is 4.8 cents/litre and Washington State is 8.3 cents/litre (combined is 13.1 cents), so our gas taxes are significantly higher.
How much gasoline is in a barrel of oil? A barrel of oil is about 158 litres. You can get about half of that into gasoline that you would put into an automobile, but let’s assuming the whole thing can be used as car gasoline. Right now a barrel of oil would cost you CAD$69, so raw crude oil would cost 44 cents per litre, assuming a 100% efficient conversion (which never happens). In reality, assuming a 10% spoilage and cost of split processing gives you an effective price of about 50 cents per litre. This leaves about 35 cents per litre left for costs and profits – it costs about 20 cents per litre to refine and transport the gasoline, which leaves about 15 cents of profit for the combined operation.
What’s left to cut? The ways you get gasoline prices lower are the following:
a) Drop the price of crude oil. A 10% drop there would result in a 4-5 cent drop in gas prices.
b) Cut refining and transportation costs. A 10% drop there would result in a 2-3 cent drop in gas prices.
c) Mandate a cut in profit. A 10% drop of profit would result in a 1-2 cent drop in gas prices.
d) Cut gasoline taxes. A 10% drop in taxes would result in a 3-4 cent drop in gas prices.
What do we have control over?
a) We have no direct influence over the crude oil markets. Our percentage consumption in the oil markets is relatively small, and we are a net exporter of oil. Even if the whole country suddenly decided to stop driving, it would not have a material effect on prices.
b) Companies have a built-in incentive to reduce refining and transportation costs themselves, as it will enable them to retain more profit if their competitors do not follow those practices. If competitors do (which happens as the know-how spreads over time) then the consumers see the benefit of lower prices as the profit margins remain the same. In other words, we cannot “legislate lower costs of refining”, just as much as we can’t legislate cars to run on nuclear fusion.
c) As I discussed previously, mandating a cut in profit below market rates will result in shortages of gasoline, as vendors will have less incentive to supply it.
d) We have the complete ability to reduce gasoline taxes, but we are unlikely to as these funds are typically earmarked elsewhere in government budgets. Federally, gasoline taxes go to general revenues. Provincially, a portion goes to general revenues, and a portion is funnelled away to the GVRD (and by extension, Translink).
The quick conclusion here is that the only short-term measure that would reduce gasoline prices is to reduce gasoline taxes. Even then, there is no guarantee that the crude oil component of gasoline prices would remain the same.
Sometimes I buy stuff on Ebay or through online retailers that only deal with shipping products in the USA. It costs a bit more to mail stuff to Canada and there is the uncertainty that is involved with customs, so it is best to set up a mailing point in Point Roberts. It’s much easier to pick stuff up there and then take it across the border yourself.
Technically if you’re in the USA for less than 24 hours, Canada Customs has the right to charge you duties and taxes for the items you bring in, even if it is a trivial amount. Typically I’ve discovered that if you bring less than $50 worth of stuff up, they won’t charge you. When you bring stuff more than $50 they will collect money for you. Normally $50 is the exemption you get with a 24 hour stay, but since there’s not much to do in Point Roberts for an hour, let alone a whole 24 hours, there’s no point in doing this.
Yesterday I went down to Point Roberts to pick up two items (of a “biological nature”, I can’t be more specific than that, but it’s all legal when I read the border services agency website), and the combined value was US$168. I was expecting to pay taxes on the amount, but instead, they must have thought I was smuggling something else. I could tell I was in for a secondary inspection when the guy at the first booth started asking me “Do you have more than $10,000 currency? Did you have contact with a farm over the past 7 days? Do you have weapons or firearms with you? Do you have tobacco or alcohol with you?”. At Point Roberts they don’t usually ask this unless if they’re suspicious that you’re trying to haul contraband.
They asked me to pull over and eventually one of their guys started to search my vehicle. They didn’t take out any components (which is good since my car is a wreck and too much contact would have rendered it inoperable) but they were very thorough with the vehicle. Of course they didn’t find anything and they let me go.
They gave me my keys and drivers’ license. They also forgot to charge me taxes on the amount outstanding, which would have been about CAD$24. I’m implicitly assuming that they cleared my goods.
I would settle for a full inspection every time if it meant that I didn’t have to pay taxes on the stuff I bring back up from Point Roberts.
The Gateway Program is a major transportation initiative that seems to be progressing at a snail’s pace, but hopefully major components of it will be completed during my lifetime. The two major projects involved are expanding Highway 1 (the freeway linking Horseshoe Bay to Hope) and the South Fraser Perimeter Road (constructing a highway south of the Port Mann Bridge to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal area). Both of these options are high-yield. There will be an instant return on investment – nobody doubts that these roads will be used. Some people are opposed to it, primarily for the predictable reasons of sprawl, pollution, and transit.
That said, both of these gateway options are sorely needed, and both of these will be the source of a minority of people that will be creating a very loud opposition to the project. Anybody that drives a car knows that the proposed enhancements are long, long overdue. If I had to gripe about it, my primary complaint about the project is that it isn’t ambitious enough (e.g. the George Massey Tunnel needs an expansion along with the South Fraser Perimeter Road construction, the 6-laneing of Highway 1 should extend out to Chilliwack, etc.), but I’ll gladly take what’s on paper rather than nothing.
I think the people opposed to gateway don’t realize that for a lot of people, transit is a horrible alternative. The entire transit system is designed to funnel people to downtown Vancouver and back, and for those that don’t have a need to head downtown, a car is always the better option. The only exception to the downtown rule is if you live on a high-frequency direct line (e.g. within a two minute walk anywhere along the B-line routes) or the Skytrain network – otherwise the economics (time vs. money) just don’t favour public transportation. When taking 45 minutes to get to your destination by transit versus 15 minutes by car, one really has to start valuing their time properly – if taking a car costs you $3 for each hour of time you save, are anti-gateway activists basically telling you that your time is worth less than that? I think it is this arrogance, somebody telling me that I can’t make the choice to save time by spending money (i.e. taking my car) that turns me off their argument.
This isn’t a mutually exclusive decision between transit and roads. As the intrepid councillor from Langley says on his site, both roads and transit options are needed. My take is to build roads where they’re needed (and where there’s space for them), and when you reach a critical mass of density, build rapid transit (the Expo, Canada and even the Millennium line will all prove to be money well spent). To say that the transportation needs in the Lower Mainland can be solved by public transportation alone is so delusional it’s difficult to even have a coherent conversation with transit-only proponents.
