24 hours: letters to readers of November 13, 2024

Highways

Vacations often provide an opportunity to step back from political activity and evaluate current discourse. As the November 24 votes approach, the campaign has transformed into a veritable war of numbers and dogmatic arguments. Beyond local beliefs, it is essential to put people at the heart of this national vote.

Concretely, I took the A1 section daily towards the economic zone of Plan-les-Ouates, sometimes spending up to three hours in traffic jams each day, with the mental load that this causes. Most people don’t live near a train station or bus stop to go directly to the hospital, children’s activities, shopping, or a weekend away. This is the illusion of a certain segment of the population who lives or works in the city, benefiting from flexible hours or the possibility of teleworking.

The opponents’ arguments are disconnected from reality: this highway, which dates from the 1960s, is no longer suitable. This has nothing to do with the rejection of rail, cycling or biodiversity, often used as an excuse.

We cannot be upset that 3 hectares are being expropriated from a farmer in view of the general interest of the 90,000 vehicles using this route every day and who will be compensated.

On November 24, it is crucial to ask ourselves the question: should we not think of those who work in our hospitals, our factories, our businesses, our artisans, and all those who depend on these national infrastructures for their safety and security? their serenity? I believe it is imperative to vote yes, in order to take into account all realities and to escape from a navel-gazing and dogmatic local debate in which some have lost their way.

Laure Damtsas, PLR municipal councilor, Nyon

Highways

Not long ago, we witnessed the grouping of 340 professors against motorway widenings; on November 4, there were again 17 of them who came together to position themselves in “24 hours” against the extensions of national roads. One wonders if the merits of their arguments are directly proportional to the number of colleagues who share them.

Let us look at the argument developed. A new transport offer leads to an increase in demand (induced traffic): yes, but marginally. The real driver of demand lies in economic and demographic dynamism: +137% traffic on national roads between 1990 and 2019, before any enlargement!

New scheduled “bottlenecks”: the avalanche of cars on cities, no one believes it. For decades, the latter have been developing a development policy (removal of parking spaces, traffic lanes, pedestrianization, etc.) which discourages users from coming there by car. New P+Rs are planned!

Negative impact of enlargement (agricultural land, pollution, CO₂): from 2035, we will no longer register vehicles emitting CO₂. As for the land footprint: 7.9 hectares of precious arable land will be consumed (then compensated) for all the projects (i.e. eleven football fields). Is the main economic and social artery of our region worth the price?

Costs of enlargements for society: according to the Federal Statistical Office, individual transport covers 86% of its costs (including health and climate damage), while rail only covers 45% of its costs. its overall costs. And yet, we absolutely must continue to invest in rail!

Gérard Métrailler, Assens

Highways

If the people decide to support the widening of motorways and the often underestimated ancillary developments such as motorway junctions or modifications to cantonal roads, more than 53 hectares of arable land will be destroyed, or more than 76 football fields. .

This may seem negligible to some, but the concreteization of fertile soils is doubly damaging.

First, it prevents farmers from doing their job, which is to feed the population. Our share of food self-sufficiency in Switzerland is 49%. Expanding highways means increasing our dependence on foreign foods, often produced in much less environmentally friendly ways.

There is always a good reason to take land away from farmers in order to put in various infrastructures. But apart from traffic jams, nothing grows on the tarmac of our highways. The figures speak for themselves, useful agricultural areas were 1.48 million hectares in 1980 and they fell to around 1.04 million hectares in 2018.

Secondly, what will not be produced in Switzerland will be imported from abroad, which will generate more traffic, more trucks, more nuisance, more work to build wider roads to deliver food that is not available to our plates. we will no longer be able to produce here… since we will have put highways there. It’s a real vicious circle.

We need agricultural land to feed our population and contribute to the beauty of our landscapes of which we are so proud.

Let’s vote no to the extension of highways that destroy our agricultural land.

Maurice Gay, farmer, Nyon, David Vogel, gymnasium teacher, Trélex

Highways

Two recent letters from readers attempt to make people believe that the CO₂ generated by man is not very significant compared to the natural production of this element. The processes are in fact so complex that it is pointless to deal with them numerically in this section. Simply reading a graph showing carbon flows into the atmosphere through the consumption of fossil fuels is thus easier to understand than figures: carbon stability for thousands of years and then from the beginning of the 20th century.^e century a meteoric rise in carbon flows in the atmosphere, which corresponds exactly to the nascent industrialization then to the prodigious development of limitless mass production towards overconsumption by thousands of brilliant but too irresponsible industries.

Daring to think today that man has nothing to do with it is inexcusable. Currently 1.4 billion vehicles circulate with their internal combustion engines, not counting the billions of other engines used in industry and agriculture, to which are added tens of thousands of airplanes.. Planet Earth is already sectorally disrupted and we know that tomorrow, it will be unlivable for millions of people, future climate refugees who will have to be welcomed…

Why haven’t we done anything for the planet for fifty years? And it continues, even though everything that is happening to us and will happen has been announced to us by climate specialists, responsible industrialists and far-sighted politicians. But the headlong rush continues. Let’s widen our highways…

Jean-Frédéric Mayor, Chigny

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