The A1 Hallucination

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I just spent over an hour driving between Morges and Nyon because someone crashed his car, and everyone else is rushing home, or away because the holidays are beginning. I bring this up because the friends of Global Warming want to expand the A1 between Nyon and Geneva, to allow for fluid traffic.

The traffic jam I encountered is between Morges and Nyon so to expand between Geneva and Nyon would do nothing to alleviate this problem. There was a time, when I was younger, and more optimistic, when I loved the idea of the motorway being expanded, but now I think it’s too late. It should have been done two or three decades ago. If it is done in six years it will create awful traffic jams for 10-20 years, and by the time it’s ready for use traffic will have doubled again.

I read through the TCS magazine about how expanding the motorway would fluidify traffic, help businesses and disengorge secondary roads. In truth secondary routes would be disengorged by a more comprehensive public transport network. Most cars have one person. One person can easily take a train or bus, if they are regular enough, and their working hours are convenient.

For a time I took the train from a village to Geneva and back, and the journey outwards was good, but the journey back took one and a half hours. The journey by traffic jam in a car would take 45 minutes. I would save 45 minutes by sitting in a traffic jam, rather than taking public transport.

I would be in favour of the motorway expansion if I saw that it was saturated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and if I saw that the smaller roads had the capacity to take that traffic.

When people are not commuting to work the roads are quiet. On public holidays the roads are quiet. If we found a way to keep people close to where they live, and work, then the need for such roads would decrease. Traffic is, to a large degree due to people thinking “my office is here, and my employees need to be here too.

I would prefer a decentralised co-working model whereby people and their remote office are in a co-working node close to the village where they live, rather than in a town or city. In this day and age people shouldn’t have to commute to a city to do knowledge work.

It makes sense to go to meetings, and events, but for some tasks working remotely would reduce the need for cars, motorways and more. With decentralisation we could have networks and nodes, that are more dynamic, to reduce over-saturating nodes when others are still free.

## And Finally

I am not opposed to motorways being expanded. Three lanes is optimal because it allows slow trucks to be in one lane, cars at the speed limit to be in the second lane, and people who like to drive too fast to be in the third. With just two lanes there is no spare capacity. Either you’re safe, below the speed limit, or you’re in the left lane, speeding, with cars too close behind.

My primary concern is that the motorway will mean noise pollution for years, with no benefit until a generation from now. They need to rebuild bridges, re-do plenty of roads. There is already too much noise pollution from construction, without having the motorway project making noise for decades. After that the noise of traffic will be even worse.

During lockdown we got to experience life without the sound of traffic. Now that we know the difference we have to tolerate road traffic noise pollution.