The Degraded Walking Habit

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For many years I went for an after lunch or after work walk. I would easily walk eight to ten kilometres per day. With road works in Nyon that have already lasted for many, many months, and that should last for another year, for several hundred meters of road my walking habit has been made toxic through traffic density and exposure to toxic driving behaviour.

I used to love heading out for an hour or two, to see the fields and crops change with the season. I used to love walking a multitude of routes. With aggressive cars and dogs I shifted to rural walks. This worked for a while, until road works redirected traffic along a critical section of my daily walk, so now I no longer walk at all. I run instead. Even cycling has suffered. I didn’t want to drive during Caribana, because it’s during this event that someone crashed into me driving the petrol scooter for stopping to allow a runner to cross the road and during Paleo in around two weeks because traffic will be much denser.

Traffic is also denser on other routes because the Route de St-Cergue is closed to go upwards for road works for the entire summer. This means that traffic along one of the quieter climbs is also much denser. There are other road works along the lake road, and other places. I don’t want to drive when road works and diversions make car drivers angrier and more impatient. It’s not that I faced such an issue.

The other reason for cycling far less, is of course a scheduling reason. There is a run at eight, and another one at nine thirty and the ride is at ten. I can choose between two running groups and one cycling group. Of course it doesn’t end there. If I was motivated I could also cycle with Geneva groups on Saturday mornings but that requires getting up to start cycling at seven to be in Geneva by eight to ride with that group.

There is also the matter of the zero four thirty wake up to run with the Morges group at six AM. That one does have consequences because I am tired for the rest of the day, and into the next morning, especially with disrupted sleep due to living under a roof during the summer months when a cool night is thirty degrees.

## Safe Nodes and Walkability

Before the road works I had two choices. I could walk down to Route Du Stand and although it was not COVID safe the road was quiet, so I could walk along it. When they re-designed the road, and diverted traffic they avoided Route Du Stand which is fantastic, if you live on Route Du Stand, but awful if you live in Eysins, especially during the road works, because it meant that a main road filled with people either leaving Nyon, or transiting through Route De Crassier were now diverted into Eysins for months at a time, making the village unsafe. There are few pedestrian crossings and pavements are rare, so cars always go onto the pedestrian parts, even when people are walking.

The second issue is that the Route that passed by Terre-Bonne was blocked so that pedestrians were funnelled onto a narrow road with main road traffic. The result is that you have cars, driving at speed behind you, with no safety measures. A painted line doesn’t make a route safe for walking.

If this had lasted for a week or two, we would be uncomfortable but it would be for days, rather than months. When you’re in danger at the start, and end of every single walk, for months, walks go from being healthy to being toxic. That’s why I stopped walking. That’s why I reverted to using the car.

## Urban Walks for Urban People but Not Nearby Villages

They spent over ten million to requalify the RC 11 from one type of road to another, with the disguise of encouraging walking and cycling but they forgot that the key issue is traffic density, not road user types. They forget that if you want people to replace driving with walking they need to be able to get from A to B without a car. Walkability is good, once you’re in Nyon, but awful when you’re not. Walking from Trelex and Asse might be possible, into Nyon, but walking from Arnex, Crans, Borex, Grens, Signy, Eysins, Gingins, La Rippe and other villages is not.

Pedestrians have no alternative other than to walk on the road. When the grass is cut short that’s not so bad, but when it’s long you have to choose between cars, ticks, or wet grass when it is raining. Buses, since they are once per hour, are not convenient.

The Pandemic Illumination

During the Pandemic Honeymoon, when people left their cars at home, the entire region, and all the villages that I mention were connected for the first time since the start of the 20th century. They were pleasant to walk from and to because cars were not being a nuisance. For disambiguation, a car that slows and passes pedestrians at a safe, and respectful speed is not a nuisance. Cars that pass pedestrians as if they are bollards, at the side of the road are a nuisance.

A Gravel Connection

If every village was connected to every other village with a gravel path then walkability would increase because people would be safe from road traffic at a fraction of the cost of the pharaonic RC-11 project that doesn’t even address the key problem of traffic density.

## Urban and Automative Blindness

Having had the London experience, of trains every two to four minutes, I see the requalification of the road as blind to the core issue of traffic density. The region around Divonne, Gex, but also La Cure, and the Jura has seen a massive increase in the number of cars travelling up to two hours per direction towards Nyon and Geneva.

The requalification work that is meant to widen the road, add cycling infrastructure, reduce noise pollution and more has one fundamental flaw.It completely ignores that to increase bus punctuality, the best solution is to provide people with an alternative to using their cars.

I used to walk into Nyon, until it became toxic to do so, due to traffic density, and exposure to heavy traffic on secondary roads that now have main road traffic.

The best cycle lanes are those that separate you from traffic, without requiring you to cross main roads. The best cycle lanes do not throw you into car parks or force you to cycle by parked cars, with pedestrians walking in the cycling lane after parking their cars.

The Benefit is Not Worth Two Years of Disruption

The Route De Stand works were an inconvenience but I suffered through it because I expected fantastic things to be achieved. I expected the road to be widened for pedestrians, and cyclists on both sides, and for the volume of traffic to remain the same as it was.

They made cycling bi-directional, one lane on each side, but for pedestrians they exposed them directly to cyclists, so if you’re not attentive you’re in danger with cyclists. The volume of traffic has increased so that a train of cars is driving through Eysins for hours per day at rush hour.

Given the failure of the Route Du Stand changes I expect the same failure with the Route De Crassier works, especially if they have bidirectional cycling, and bi-directional pedestrians, and traffic heading into and out of the Terre-Bone parkings. I also think that by forcing traffic out of Geneva to cross the main road twice, once exiting Nyon, and again, exiting by the busy Landi parking they are endangering cyclists twice.

The Abandoned Walking Routes

Aside from cycling, and running I no longer go to Nyon, despite living two point eight kilometres away because it’s not worth taking the car for such a short trip, and I don’t want to risk having my bike stolen. I also don’t want to drive into Nyon because I don’t want to pay for parking just because walking no longer feels safe.

Silver Lining

They re-surfaced the road this weekend, so in theory those road works are now finished with. In theory tomorrow I can resume walking along the route that I enjoyed walking along before they decided to make a pig’s breakfast of local walking routes. In practice I think that the cycling segment, that I used to walk along, is months from being completed. In theory I can resume my old walking route in the Autumn of 2027, over a year from now.

In the meantime I now combine my morning run on Monday, with the morning shop, the Thursday run with the Thursday weekend shop, and I run with a group in Morges at 6am in Morges,

The biggest consequence of the never-ending road works that made my most used walking route toxic is that now I go for social runs multiple times a week. Monday with one group. Saturday with a choice of three groups and Friday with a morning group. I could even add a Thursday group to the mix if I wanted to.

It’s a shame that when they plan road works, for soft mobility, that they don’t consider pedestrians and their existing walking habits. I was forced to change my habits, to find a safe alternative.