Zürich Needs a Traffic Plan, Not Another Coat of Paint

A new study finds Swiss cyclists crash at roughly twice the Dutch rate, with tram tracks, junctions and public transport stops among the trouble spots. Zürich can build a cycle tunnel beneath its main station, then leave everyone competing for the same contested metres above. The city needs better behaviour, better junctions and rather more ambition.

Travel Broadens the Mind. Getting Home Tests It.

A magnificent wedding in Albania was followed by a journey home seemingly designed to test patience, infrastructure, border control, traffic planning and basic faith in humanity. From Tirana queue warfare to Zürich bureaucracy, cancelled Ubers and supermarket inspections, the day became an escalating comedy of inconvenience, until someone else’s travel disaster made mine look almost civilised.

Zurich’s Quiet War on the Car

Zurich’s Rämistrasse and Universitätstrasse have become a lesson in how to discourage cars without formally banning them. Poorly coordinated lights, repeated zebra crossings, permanent stop-and-go traffic and cyclists treating tram tracks as an overtaking lane turn a major route into a daily exercise in frustration, all while motorists face the strictest enforcement.