When I was walking in Neuchatel I noticed something striking. I didn’t see a single advert in favour of expanding the motorways. I expected that the Right Wing friends of Global Warming would push for the expansion of the motorways in Switzerland. That wasn’t the case.
In Switzerland, at the moment, they want to expand the A1 motorway between Geneva and Nyon and I suspect that the Gravière in Eysins was expanded to store all the soil that will be needed to widen the motorway.
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.
This weekend I could have gone to Bellevaux for the VF, Thones for the VF, Kandersteg for the VF, and gone to Charmey, Rocher de Naye and one other places for hikes and climbing. I chose to do none of these things. My reason for this is to save money on petrol, after driving quite a bit last week but also to recharge.
I’m Still an Introvert Last week I went for a hike and thought “I wish I had not gone”, until the end, when I was sad that the day was over.
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.
For a long time I thought that driving would give me freedom. I was impatient to be old enough to drive, and then I was impatient to pass my driving test. I failed the theory three times in Switzerland, zero in England, and the practical in England once, and once in Switzerland. Eventually I did pass my driving test in England, on Valentine’s day. I then drove to see the girlfriend of the time.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the recycling centre is open from 1600-2000 or so, which is great if you’re working and want to go after work. The drawback to going at this time is that the one for local villages is down a narrow road where cars can barely pass each other. If you go at rush hour traffic you have commuters, and you have people heading to recycle.
When I had the scooter I would often go with that, because with a scooter it’s easy to go down a narrow road despite cars coming towards you.
When I left for Spain Switzerland was just starting to turn Autumnal. Today, when I looked around I could see that Autumn has arrived properly in Switzerland. In Spain the sun is still warm enough for t-shirt wearing and swimming. The sun is still strong enough to change our chrominance.
Yesterday I drove for around 11 and a half hours, with just one stop to refuel. I usually stop three or four times on that route but I felt like trying to do it in a single hop.
Three lanes are always better than two but environmentalists are against expanding from two lanes to three lanes because they say that having three lanes will promote the use of the car. I believe that this is a flawed argument.
https://youtu.be/8UpVDaugZW0
The A1 motorway between Geneva and Lausanne is often congested because when a slow vehicle wants to overtake a slower moving vehicle it blocks the motorway as can be seen in the video included within this post.
I am impatient to try a self driving car. I am impatient for the day when the car will know where we’re meant to be and at what time. That is when cars will be autonomous. In this future I envision that self driving cars will teach us how to drive. For the moment learning to drive a car is problematic because you need fuel, you need a car and you need someone trusting enough to put their life and car in your hands.
Today with Tomtom Go you pay 20CHF per year for the maps and traffic information. When I first bought the TomTom Europe apps for iOS and Android they cost about 170CHF an operating system. If my memory serves me well traffic information would cost an additional 100 CHF per year. As a result of the high cost for traffic information I was in the habit of using Waze. As long as you have a data connection you get maps and traffic information for free.