Traffic Calming and Motorway Expansion

In 2030 the motorway between Nyon and Geneva will be expanded to three lanes because they think that this will encourage growth and promote the economy. At the same time almost every village is lowering the speed limit to thirty kilometres per hour and villages like Signy, Gingins and others are placing traffic calming to slow down traffic and discourage traffic from crossing villages and towns.

In light of this I saw that Signy are adding new traffic calming measures to slow traffic down, which would be fantastic, if it wasn’t completely absurd. The absurdity of the change in Signy is that the road has bricks in the middle, and now cars are forced to drive across these bricks increasing road noise but also congestion.

At the same time this congestion measure will slow, and anger drivers, without providing people with a pedestrian and cycling option. People will be forced to stop, and wait to let people pass. If a bus crosses the village then the road is blocked until it moves on.

I don’t understand why they would want to expand the motorway in six years, whilst trying to discourage people to cross villages and towns. Instead of wasting money on slowing traffic, and this is a waste of money, they should provide gravel paths, from Nyon to Signy, from Signy to Eysins, from Borex to Signy, from Signy towards Grens and more.

For me the rational approach is to make walking and cycling, and e-scooters safe when going between villages, because if they’re safe, then cars remain parked. A parked car does not contribute to congestion, a driven one does.

Why would you restrict traffic six years before spending billions expanding the motorway? The other perversion of this change is that it will endanger, rather than make cyclists safer. When roads constrict cars speed up, above the speed limit, to overtake people cycling at the speed limit.I see this all the time in villages such as Eysins.

I used to drive from Eysins, through Signy, to avoid the congestion of traffic going into Nyon but with the new change it will force me to go into the traffic jam, rather than the quicker, less congested route.

They have spent three to five years re-building the interchange for Nyon, and now I see that they want to suffocate traffic leaving Signy so I think that the planners are not thinking things through. Expanding the motorway between Nyon and Geneva only makes sense if the throughput when you leave the motorway is increased, and the opposite is true.

I’m assuming that the motorway expansion will be forced through despite opposition to it. In my humble opinion they should improve cycling route quality between Nyon and Geneva so that cyclists are safe and separate from traffic for the entire journey. I think that agricultural roads should be converted to be voie verte, dedicated to cycling and walking.

And Finally

Rather than drive back to Signy Centre after forgetting a key “ingredient” for dinner I took my foot e-scooter to Portes De Nyon rather than drive and it went fine. If they want to throttle car traffic then I will drive even less than I drive now. I used to drive to and from Geneva every day, sometimes two to three times a day. Now I drive two times per week, for shopping. That might change soon. I might shop daily, once again.