Double Blind

Langley Politics has a post concerning a road that I’ve written about a lot here lately, zero avenue.

I gave notice of two motions that will come back at the next meeting. The first is to have staff and the province work on ways to improve traffic flow at 0 Ave. and 264th St., as growing border line-ups are snarling traffic for residents wanting to go east-west on 0, and for people trying to get down 264th to access 0.

For those that don’t know the area, Google Maps is your friend. Observe that Zero Ave makes a semi-circle around the border area. There are stop sign on the east and west directions and north-south traffic has the right of way. Typically what happens is that there is enough border traffic queued up southbound that it clogs highway 13. You have quite a bit of queue-jumping from people that try to take Zero Ave east-bound and turn south onto Highway 13, and some people that take Zero Ave west-bound and turn south onto Highway 13. Finally, people that want to get onto Zero Ave from Highway 13 have no opportunity since they will be waiting in traffic that is destined to cross the border. Making the situation worse, people very rarely leave room in the intersection for traffic to pass since they are afraid that their spot will be taken by the aforementioned queue jumpers. Finally, there is a duty-free which has a minuscule parking lot on the west side of Zero Ave (for employees) which makes the situation worse.

The analysis of the situation is as follows.

The low cost solution would be to ban right turns for east-bound traffic and to ban left turns for west-bound traffic on Zero Ave. The cost would be to put up two road signs at the intersection and road signs for people that want to get into the waiting queue. East-bound traffic on Zero Ave would be directed north to 264 St (and making the 315-degree right-hand turn onto Highway 13 at approximately 5th Ave) , while west-bound traffic on Zero Ave would be directed north at 272 St, then west on 8 Ave, and then south onto Highway 13. For an additional cost, these can be re-aligned.

The advantage of the low cost solution is that it would only involve putting up some road signs – no actions with constructing new roads are required.

The disadvantage of the low cost solution is that it would increase traffic somewhat in the ‘detour’ roads. In addition, there will be a tendency for people to ignore the no-turn signs, especially at off-peak hours when there isn’t much of a queue at the intersection. This also does not solve the problem of people on Highway 13 wanting to get into Zero Ave – they would have to use the detour routes as well.

The medium cost solution would involve expanding the queueing lanes at Zero Avenue. Traffic that is destined to the border from Zero Ave would have their holding lane, and this would enable flow-through traffic to zip through the intersection as designed. A dedicated lane on Highway 13 would also have to be constructed to allow flow to Zero Ave.

The advantage of this is that you still have freedom to turn into the border from Zero Avenue, and not be delayed, assuming that the holding lanes are built long enough.

The disadvantage is that it would cost money to acquire property and construct the actual roads involved. In addition, the extra lane on Highway 13 would most likely be used for truck traffic rather than as a dedicated route to Zero Ave. This doesn’t solve queue jumpers either.

The Cadillac solution, which will never have a chance of going through due to excessive cost, would be to build an overpass. I can think of many other places that could use that infrastructure money (think about the intersection of Highway 91 and 72 St) and suffice to say, Zero Ave is not going to get it.

My instincts from a cost-benefit perspective favour the cheap solution.

Finally, the speed bumps on the Langley intersections of Zero Avenue really need to be removed, or at least from the trivial intersections.

Steven den Beste comes up with a wonderful analysis why Mechs can’t work in real life.

Its funny, but it is also quite educational and well worth reading. It also reminds me of a previous article he wrote over three years ago why spaceships would have huge heat problems in practice.

Putting a long story short, we visited 49N114W and 49N112W. Both points are in Alberta, very close to the Canada-USA border. The first hike was generally more interesting as it involved going up and down some terrain and a bit of off-trail hiking. The picture above shows the Google Earth trace that we attempted to reach the point. The zig-zag just on the northeast side of the river was a best guess, although I believe it is relatively accurate.

Many people do not know that the Canada-USA border (at least for the western half of Canada) is not exactly on the 49 north latitude. In this particular case, the actual border was slightly south of 49 north. That said, it was pretty cool being able to walk across the border into the USA and not be harassed by customs officials. As you can tell by the map, our invasion in the USA was short-lived as we tried to figure the best way to get to the boundary vista. I’ve never visited the state of Montana either, until that day.

The story about US Senator Larry Craig is going to be the year’s top story in politics. It is so trashy, yet so educational.

First, some trash. At the Minneapolis airport, Craig got busted by an undercover police officer for attempting to solicit sex in the men’s room stall (the actual charge was “disorderly conduct”). You can read the police transcript at The Smoking Gun. I never knew that airport restrooms could be such a hot spot for sexual activity.

Secondly, the education – Larry Craig’s press statement he made on August 28 has got to be one of the worst “gasoline on the fire” statements ever. The guy pleads guilty to the offence, yet three months later, he wants to get a lawyer to try to overturn the guilty plea. Plus, his pleas of “I am not gay, I never have been gay” resonate very closely to when Bill Clinton said “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky“. In any scenario the guy ends up looking bad.

The education is that there is no shortage of public officials that made stupid mistakes in their lives (just look here in British Columbia where we have no shortage of scandals), but the two recent ones have recovered swiftly. Larry Craig should have taken a lesson.

My prediction is that he’ll be making an exit from politics when his term expires in 2008.

I’ll be taking an extra long weekend and will be going camping up in the southwestern part of Alberta. PST free shopping! Actually shopping is the last thing on the itinerary, it will be purely exploration.

Hopefully we’ll be able to do a few border confluence points (looking at 49N114W for the vista view, 49N112W is near an official border crossing and a dry lake). Most of these points along the border have only been explored 5 or 6 years ago and it would be nice to add a few data points to the gallery – the terrain might have changed.

I’ve commented on this weblog before, but the person writing the “101 people that are screwing up Canada” weblog is just about to announce who the number one person is.

There are a few boards out there with rumoured names and I don’t think it will be Pierre Trudeau (or rather his ghost since the weblog is about people that are currently living). I’m thinking that it will either be somebody of “big media” or perhaps Lucien Bouchard. Jean Charest is a good candidate as well. My hunch is that it will be somebody related to Quebec, mainly because the cultural divide between Quebec and the rest of the country is what has been plaguing the country since its inception.

This is a rather unstructured, rambling post. You’ve been warned.

Langley Politics has an article about the consideration of water meters. In the Greater Vancouver Regional District, there is plenty of it (three huge reservoirs in the northern mountains), with high quality and at an inexpensive price. In about 70% of Langley, the supply of water comes from wells/groudwater. In Abbotsford, the water comes from Norrish Creek and Cannell Lake and is chlorinated. In Chilliwack, the water comes from the Sardis/Vedder aquifer and is not chlorinated and despite what people may think, is of exceptionally high quality.

Water, just like bandwidth and other utilities, tends to be consumed at a faster rate when it is “free”. Certain jurisdictions have pay-per-volume usage while some (like Richmond) have a flat rate. There is generally resistance (for obvious reasons) to introducing a fee for volume. The lower mainland has not had a significant water crisis to make this a high profile political issue (unlike Tofino in the summer of 2006), although as the population grows there will likely be an extremely light snowpack season in the next 10 years that will warrant extreme conservation measures.

Most people do not know the relationship between a regional district and a municipality in BC. A regional district (e.g. Greater Vancouver Regional District, Fraser Valley Regional District) is responsible for providing government for unincorporated areas and also provide services (e.g. water and sewer) for the entire area.

Simple economics is one way to ensure that a resource is conserved – with respect to this, I asked some questions about the economic relationship between the municipality (Langley) and the regional district. Jordan Bateman, the Langley councillor, gave a very prompt response to my questions.

Q: Does it [GVRD] charge municipalities by the megalitre or is the supply effectively “free”?

A: Yes, the GVRD charges roughly $0.35 / megalitre. The charge is scheduled to increase steadily over the next five year to recoup increased treatment costs.

If this charge is the same for all member municipalities, it is very interesting to see how municipalities treat their water situations – do they treat water as a “profit centre”, or do they just choose to cover costs (the variable cost being the water charge, and the capital costs concerning construction and maintenance of pipelines).

Q: I know of course member municipalities can charge a water tax (whether flat or consumption-based), does this revenue directly flow into the municipalities’ revenue stream or is there some sort of mechanism where the GVRD/GVWD receives a portion of such revenues?

A: A portion of the water utility revenue (roughly one-third) is used to pay for GVRD water at the megalitre rate mentioned above. The is also a portion of development cost charges that go to the GVRD for water/sewer improvements.

So the GVRD takes a cut for the marginal cost of water plus capital improvements. After this, Langley retains a significant portion of money. I do not know if this excess is strictly earmarked for utility expansion or whether it is moved into a general revenue fund.

I also think the following comment from a “Food for thought” (August 15, 7:06pm) was very relevant:

[on conversion to variable-rate water metering being cheaper than fixed rate] Now as for less cost. Not true.

Lets take a for instant. Community Y presents a budget for a particular year for X amount of dollars based on the previous years usage. Gotta build the mains.

Everybody in the community is metered so they all figure, being cheap and wanting to help the environment, they will cut their use thus cutting their costs. Sorry try again. Remember that budget.

Now you have community X which has to make up the loss from the previous year. So what happens…the obvious, the price per litre is raised to meet the needs of the budget.

Despite the fact that the rest of his post was the anti-privatization rhetoric, he makes a good point with respect to budgeting and water – if your residents have a choice to pay for flat-rate billing or variable-rate billing, they will likely choose variable rate billing if their actual consumption is significantly under the flat rate. This is happening in Richmond – some residents are choosing to convert to variable-rate billing and are ending up saving money. This system only works, however if the municipality doesn’t treat water revenues as a profit centre. If most municipalities are treating water supplies as a profit centre then it is to their financial disadvantage to give people the choice of conversion – once the critical mass of people (the ones that don’t consume too much water to begin with) convert to variable rate billing, the city will raise the price of water in order to maintain their budgetary figures.

This is analogous to local governments in America raising gas taxes because fuel consumption has been declining as people drive more fuel efficient vehicles – the highway budget needs a certain amount of money and if people aren’t spending enough on fuel, then they must raise their revenue from somewhere.

I would like to thank Jordan for his quick replies to my questions – I’m glad that intelligent people still manage to get elected. If I lived in Langley, I’d be voting for him.

Three fellows, by the names of Cameron Drew, Jeremy Demman and Ryan Gagnon, made it to 52 North, 118 West. It involved a four day adventure and multiple modes of transportation (going through forest service roads, taking a boat up river, and hiking through trees and rocks). Very, very impressive work.

I’m thinking that doing 51N124W is going to be a challenge similar to this, although the gruntwork will be going through the vegetation mess associated with hiking up a creek valley.

Alas, the predictions I made about Hurricane Dean in my previous post did not come to fruition. This is fortunate, as I thought the hurricane was well positioned to severely damage the entire island nation. Instead, they’ll be shaken, but business will be back to normal in a week after they clean up the mess. The centre of the storm passed about 20 nautical miles south of the southern-most point on the island, which saved most of them from receiving the full force of the hurricane. Although the south end of Jamaica was pounded with very strong winds (around 110mph), it could have been much, much worse if the Hurricane followed the predicted trajectory just a couple days earlier, which took it straight through the island. In that scenario we were looking for winds around 160mph.

If you are standing right inside the eye of a hurricane you will feel nothing (it will be a sunny sky and very calm). As the hurricane centre moves you will shortly begin to experience the worst of the storm.

Finally, the previous post received a barrage of comments and this was because it was linked to the first page on Google for Hurricane Dean and Jamaica searches. I am awfully surprised that Google did this as normally my posts are treated like noise by the search engine.

The official track (a compilation of certain computer models) show that Hurricane Dean will slam into Jamaica in about 48 hours. There is a small chance that it will get sideswiped to the north or south (UKMET shows the south, GFDL has it to the north), but the track projection will indicate a direct hit. Since Dean will likely be a category 4 hurricane at this point, it will cause immense amounts of damage.

Coming very soon, watch out for calls for donations and the tragedy of vacationers that didn’t read the cards on the table and get the hell out of dodge. While I am sympathetic to their situation, this is one of the perils of living in the Caribbean and also why throughout history civilization did not flourish there for a long duration of time – they got wiped out every half century or so.

Once Hurricane Dean is done in Jamaica, it will reorganize itself and likely head toward the Texas coast. This depends on where the high pressure ridges are at this time – it could get pushed straight north (the GFDL model has it dangerously close to New Orleans!), or continue on its trajectory. It is very difficult to predict hurricane tracks more than 2 days out, especially after the hurricane makes landfall.