We waste a lot of time in traffic jams. A driver from Madrid spends about 42 hours a year in one of them. One Argentine… more than 100. And if we go to cities like London or New York, things skyrocket. In addition to time, it also costs an absurd amount of money, and there are countries that have insisted on expanding highways to try to solve the problem.
Switzerland is one of those countries, but curiously, the population has voted against the expansion of the largest, and congested, A1 highway that crosses the country. And it makes sense if we take into account the metaphor of the fish that adapts to the size of the aquarium.
The problem of the A1. It is the largest highway in the country. It is 410 kilometers from east to west and is, according to the Federal Statistical Office, the busiest. In 2023, more than 16,200 hours of traffic jams were recorded, a brutal bottleneck whose solution seemed simple to the Federal Council: widen the road.
The plan. Thus, and within the Strategic Development Program for National Highways 2030, the Federal Council proposed the development of an expansion plan in several stages. There would be sections that would be expanded from two to three lanes, others from four to six and the widest of the current six to eight. The multi-tunnel highways would also be unfolded in order to make traffic more fluid.
The budget only for the remodeling of the A1? 5 billion Swiss francs, about 5.4 billion euros, and this without taking into account subsequent maintenance. The financing would come from taxes on gasoline and vehicles, but environmental associations such as actif-trafiC took a position against it, commenting that “the average citizen would end up paying the highest cost of traffic such as accidents, noise and air pollution, and the deterioration of public health”.
NoIn favor were the right-wing parties, automobile associations and business unions. Against it, environmental organizations, WWF, Greenpeace, farmers’ organizations and left-wing political groups. The referendum was called for November 24 with the intention of letting the electorate speak. And boy did he do it.
After a close day, 52.7% of Swiss they voted against of the A1 expansion program.
Reactions. Those who supported the project argued that traffic jams had increased significantly in recent years, especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that invited many Swiss to flee the large and expensive cities, where they continue to work, so Those roads get congested and will continue to get congested.
Those who opposed celebrate the result by demanding that the funds be allocated to public transport and the renovation of existing highways. Furthermore, they argue that larger roads would only generate more traffic.
The fish and the aquarium. The latter is something that we have been able to verify thanks to the highway expansions in the United States and Canada. Even if more and more lanes are built (like Ontario’s 18 lanes), the roads continue to become congested.
Los Angeles shows us this every Thanksgiving and every Christmas and here the metaphor of the fish and the aquarium comes into play: the animal grows depending on the available space, so by increasing the lanes, the only thing we do is create more traffic. , but the bottleneck will still be there. It is a topic that the North American media themselves carry years questioningbut the population is clear about it. At least in Switzerland.
Sous Terrain Cargo. What it does seem that Switzerland will do on its roads is a second network of roads, but underground. With the aim of reducing both communication and noise, and to avoid continuing to saturate the roads, a program is on the table to, by 2040, create a 500 kilometer network that
It is estimated that the cost will be around 30 billion Swiss francs from the private sector and the idea is to weave a huge underground network of goods so that automated vehicles transport goods between production centers and urban centers.
Image | Roland zh
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