In general, I agree with you. In specific, I drive almost everywhere despite being a supporter of public transit, because I can't afford to live near a skytrain station and the 'last mile' adds an hour to a trip. If we had more buses, and most routes had dedicated lanes, sure. But since we're half-assing it all, more gridlock is just more gridlock. Which, among other things, means more pollution.
edit: compare to a city like Seattle, which has similar weather, hills, density, etc. A notable feature of the transit centers there is a Park & Ride: a place where folks can park their cars (for free, when I lived there) and get into transit. Vancouver does not have anything of the sort. If you want to park somewhere and take transit into the downtown core, there are extremely limited options. So you get too many drivers. Disincentivizing cars usage is great when there is a viable alternative -- in the absence of such an alternative, it's just flagellation for its own sake.
Sure, you're making a reasonable choice given the current reality. But it doesn't have to be that way. When I say driving should be difficult, I don't mean just make the roads worse without any other changes. I mean improve active transportation, transit, and housing density/affordability. In the short term, each improvement here will cause some pain in making driving slightly harder, but after sufficient time the other options will be good enough that nobody will miss driving.
edit: compare to a city like Seattle, which has similar weather, hills, density, etc. A notable feature of the transit centers there is a Park & Ride: a place where folks can park their cars (for free, when I lived there) and get into transit. Vancouver does not have anything of the sort. If you want to park somewhere and take transit into the downtown core, there are extremely limited options. So you get too many drivers. Disincentivizing cars usage is great when there is a viable alternative -- in the absence of such an alternative, it's just flagellation for its own sake.