Traffic jam on the A9 last Wednesday evening
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Smart highways could be around the corner in Switzerland, with EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, undertaking a study to improve traffic flows by using stoplights to enter highways, with funding from the Swiss Federal Roads Office.
There may be a growing sense of urgency to resolve highway traffic jams; Lausanne recently argued for more money more rapidly for trains in order to smooth out timetables for public transport and thus reduce city traffic jams. And EPFL says some recent studies show that from 2009 to 2010, an only 2.6 percent increase in highway traffic raised the number of reported traffic jams by a third.
The team has already concluded that a more effective solution would be monitoring and regulating traffic flows over a longer stretch to reduce traffic jams. The goal is to develop intelligent traffic management systems to optimize traffic flow on highways in real-time, by enforcing variable speed limits on highways and setting up traffic lights on the highway’s access ramps, EPFL says in a statement.
Lights can cut delays by 10-20%
“Experience from around the world has shown that ramp metering can reduce delays on highways by between 10 to 20 percent,” says Nikolas Geroliminis, head of the Luts (laboratory of urban transport systems) programme at the university. “Reduced congestion leads to less stop-and-go traffic, less gasoline consumption and CO2 emissions.”
Traffic lights to enter highways date back decades and are used in many parts of the world, but Switzerland’s situation has two special features. Entry ramps are very short in many areas and traffic jams in urban areas, with narrow streets, can quickly spread back from the autoroute entrance to city centres.
System-wide strategy needed
“What we need is a strategy that can control the influx of cars on all of the highway access points simultaneously to adapt to the queue on the road,” says Geroliminis. he explains. Queues on access ramps and highway congestion can be reduced by controlling speed limits and highway access across a large portion of the network, he argues.
His research group is developing an algorithm to control the traffic lights and speed limits. “Using data obtained from traffic monitoring devices mounted along the highway and on access roads, the algorithm would act as a virtual traffic warden, smoothing traffic by regulating the speed limit and restricting traffic flow onto the highway in real-time”, the EPFL statement says.
The team has selected two frequently congested highway segments they say, one of them in Vaud, to provide traffic data and serve as a test sites for their models.
The data obtained could be used to test the fesability of their method using computer simulations. The next question is whether the roads office would be willing to fund a full-scale field implementation of their strategy, but backing could well come from the regional development programme and the city of Lausanne, which are looking to improve traffic flows in the next decade.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A study involving nearly 40,000 older women (average age 61.5) in the US for some 20 years has concluded that vitamins and other supplements may lead to an increased risk of death. The Archives of Internal Medicine 10 October published a paper by lead author Jaakko Mursu of the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland, and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He and colleagues used data collected during the Iowa Women’s Health Study in a series of questionnaires starting in 1986, with women self-reporting their use of supplements. Mursu’s group concluded: “Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements. We recommend that they be used with strong medically based cause, such as symptomatic nutrient deficiency disease.”
Dr Goran Bjelakovic of the University of Nis in Serbia remarked in a comment in the journal: “Dietary supplementation has shifted from preventing deficiency to trying to promote wellness and prevent disease.”
Science Daily reports that “the authors found that use of most supplements was not associated with reduced total mortality in older women, and many supplements appeared associated with increased mortality risk. After adjustment, use of multivitamins, vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc and copper, were all associated with increased risk of death in the study population. Conversely, calcium supplements appear to reduce risk of mortality. The association between supplement intake and mortality risk was strongest with iron, and the authors found a dose-response relationship as increased risk of mortality was seen at progressively lower doses as women aged throughout the study.”
The BBC‘s report on the study leaned towards the “less is better” conclusion of the authors, and The Scotsman added a note of caution, citing Dr Glenys Jones, a nutritionist with the Department of Diet and Population Health at the MRC Human Nutrition Research, Cambridge, in the UK: “This observational study is interesting, but it does not show that supplement use causes women to die earlier,” noting that the women probably died of disease and some may have been taking the supplements in relationship to illness.
Several American media reports were more skeptical. The Los Angeles Times cites Dr David Heber, director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition as saying “I wouldn’t recommend anyone change what they’re doing based on this study” arguing that “It’s very hard to conclude cause and effect.”
public transport, Geneva
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swiss public transport systems do more than simply carry more people for less fuel: they also get relatively high ecology marks for their overall impact on the environment.
A study ordered by the federal government, published in German 9 September, shows that while public transport is far ahead of road traffic at the moment in terms of pollution impact, much more needs to be done to ensure it stays well ahead because of the rapid rate of growth predicted for public transport, while cars are seeing improvements.
Public transport systems do well in terms of energy consumption, CO2 and atmospheric pollution but their good marks are lowered slightly by the increase in their traffic volume, higher speeds and their use of tunnels. The noise from trains, despite significant progress in recent years to reduce this, remains a problem.
The study, which also projected the impact of public transport over the next 20 years, has resulted in a decision by the Federal Council to redouble efforts to reduce noise, carbon emissions and to put a greater emphasis on susbtainable development where public transport is concerned.
A panel of experts and government officials in Russia came together 27 April to “dispel the idea that road building is so corrupt that Russia’s notoriously bad roads are much more expensive than in Europe and the United States,” reports the Moscow Times. The question of cost, not to mention quality, has been in the news regularly since Ria Novosti, the government news agency, published figures in August 2010 that appeared to show Russia spending three times as much as the US to build one kilometre of road, with the cost rising to more than eight times as much if the road is in Moscow, compared to the US average.
Building 1km of a US road costs $5.9 million, according to Ria Novosti’s figures, while a European road is $6.9m and a Russian road $17.6m, unless it is in Moscow, in which case the cost is $51.7m. The article from August points out that the cost varies depending on several factors such as the number of lanes and the type of ground.
The Moscow Times quotes a Russian official who says that the higher cost isn’t just graft. “‘When roads are badly built, people blame corruption. You have to separate the flies from the meat patties; it’s not so simple,’ said government road technology expert Mikhail Pozdnyakov.” But the newspaper then adds that “The perception of road building as synonymous with graft is not completely unfounded. Road building is one of the most corrupt sectors, according to a recent analysis by the National Anti-Corruption Committee.”
The chairman of the committee meeting this week points out that one reason for cost differences is that in Europe the cost of buying the land is not included in the price of roads, whereas it is, in Russia.
A new study by universities in Michigan in the US and Montreal in Canada, with 1,300 children, draws a link between hours of television watched when little and poor performance by children as they get older. Higher junk food consumption, increased body fat, more bullying by others at school and worse performance at school were some of the results of watching more than the recommended maximum of two hours a day.
Links to other sites: BBC, Yahoo News Canada
A study of a million UK women, published in the British Medical Journal, indicates that those who drink alcohol and are overweight may be at as much as double the risk for developing cirrhosis of the liver and other liver diseases. The study suggests that alcohol limits for obese and overweight people may need to be redefined.
Links to other sites: British Medical Journal, BBC
Image 2010: Bakbasel
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lech in Austria and Lucerne in Switzerland were the two most popular seasonal tourist destinations in the Alpine region in 2009: Lech in winter and Lucerne in summer. Switzerland has three destinations among the overall top 10 for the year: Lucerne, Zurich and Engelberg. But a report published 21 January on tourism in the region shows Austrian resorts well ahead of Swiss ones as popular winter resorts, taking the first seven places, with Zermatt in eighth. Zermatt gains ground as a year-round destination because it is also popular in summer.
Gordon Shepherd, WWF international policy and Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic research, at Geneva climate conference
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-quarter of the world’s population is likely to be affected by rising ocean levels provoked by melting Arctic ice, a WWF study released 2 September shows. The Arctic is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, the new Arctic Climate Feedbacks report shows. As a result, the level of oceans can be expected to rise by one metre by the end of the 21st century, twice as fast as current predictions suggest.
The report pulls together the most recent data covering the Arctic and its impact. It includes the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in global sea level projections, which were not included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2007 assessment of the Arctic, widely relied on. The addition of these areas appears likely to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the new data shows.
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
The Arctic holds twice as much carbon as the rest of the world and the study indicates that as warming speeds up, carbon released by warmer soils could reach significant levels. Read more…
Geneva, a city that gives you more money after taxes, and lets you spend it quickly
Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva and Zurich among the top five priciest cities in the world, along with Oslo, Copenhagen and Toky, according to a study by bank UBS comparing prices and earning in 73 cities around the world. Salaries are highest in Switzerland, Denmark and the US, with workers in Geneva and Zurich having the highest net incomes in the world. The average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than one-fifteenth of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
Prices for food in Switzerland are about 45 percent more for food on average than in the rest of Western Europe but to balance it out “no other city allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva.”
UBS notes that the comparisons are greatly affected by currency fluctuations. London fell 20 places in the cost categories thanks to the pound’s “precipitous devaluation” in the first half of 2009.
The Pentagon in the US is considering banning all smoking by soldiers, including those in battle, and stopping sales of cigarettes at military bases. A study done for the Pentagon is recommending the ban saying that in the short term it harms battle readiness and in the long term the cost to the health of soldiers is high, which also creates a financial burden for the government. CNN
