Leiden Observatory is the world’s oldest university observatory. It’s currently located on the university’s science campus at the edge of the city, but for over a hundred years it occupied a building downtown. This building, called the Old Observatory, dates from 1861 (the Observatory itself was founded in 1633) and is suffering from many years of poor maintenance. Last year, our Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Ronald Plasterk, allocated 2.8 million euros to restore the Old Observatory to its former glory. Today the minister was invited to start the restoration works by lifting one of the telescope domes off the roof.

I needed a break from my uncooperative collapse model, so I went to have a look. Also, I didn’t want to miss any possible mishaps. You never know what might happen when you let a secretary of state operate a mobile crane. They’re used to running the country, not a heavy piece of construction equipment.

As it turned out, not quite surprisingly, everything went just fine. The dome did swing about a bit during its descent, but it didn’t knock into the building or against any astronomers. The dome landed safely on the right spot. A local newspaper, the Leidsch Dagblad, was on scene to film the occasion. Pictures by myself and others are gathered here.

Because I didn’t want to sit through half an hour of speeches before the main event, I arrived later than most guests. Now I had to watch from behind a fence, but this turned out to have its virtues. After Plasterk put the dome on the ground, he led the party back to the Old Observatory building. He looked around before stepping through the door and noticed a bunch of people watching (and photographing) him from behind a fence a few metres away. Of course, those people were me and a few other students.

Plasterk turned around and headed straight for us. He must have heard us talk English, because he asked (in English) whether we were tourists. When we said we were students at the university, he told us he used to study there as well. In fact, as a biology student, he spent a lot of time at the Old Observatory. (For some reason, the biology faculty held classes there for many years.) We talked briefly about the difficulty of astronomical observations in Leiden nowadays, what with the generally poor weather, and we agreed this wasn’t such a bad thing, as it means we get to go to Chile every now and then to use much bigger telescopes. He then wished us a nice day and went back inside to finish the official programme.

This impromptu chat didn’t go unnoticed by the gathered journalists, who seemed to think that anyone talking to the minister must also be noteworthy. I’ve never had so many cameras pointed at me. Now let’s see if those journalists can find out why Plasterk displayed such interest in us.

“That [Barack Obama] leads us now is a breathtaking statement of American open-mindedness and, yes, our native liberality,” writes Joe Klein in Time. I appreciate the sentiment, but I think he could hardly be more wrong. Rather, it’s because of the long-standing American closed-mindedness and their native conservatism that only now do the US have a president who is not a white male. And if Ameria truly were as open-minded and liberal as Klein implies, Obama’s skin colour wouldn’t have attracted even a fraction of the attention it has.

Hilarious remix of the shoe throwing incident in Iraq:

I have to vent some more, this time regarding the stupid arguments used by people opposed to the construction of that light rail through Leiden I talked about yesterday. Let me do a brief recap first. There are plans to build a brand new public transport project, running roughly east-west through Leiden, providing an easy and fast connection to and from key locations inside the city and multiple towns and villages on either side, plus the beach on the west. This will be a light rail, which is really just a large tram that will run more or less as a train outside the city limits. It is called the RijnGouweLijn, or RGL for short. The reason for the referendum is the division in the city council on whether or not to go ahead with the plans, fueled by the strong opposition from part of the public.

With March 7, the date for the referendum, approaching fast, the yay and the nay camps are trying to gather support amongst the citizens of Leiden. Both have set up a website, RijnGouweLijn JA! (RGL Yes!) and Geen Trein door de Stad (No Train through the City), and both have a list of arguments in support of their standpoint. It’s too bad that many of the arguments make no sense at all. I’ll start with the nay camp’s ten arguments against the RGL. (Comments between square brackets are mine.)

1. Nobody asks for the RGL. Most people have no use for a fast tram from Gouda [a city east of Leiden and the intended eastern terminus for the RGL] to the A44 [a highway running north to south on the west side of Leiden].

The opposition is off to a bad start right away. There are plenty of people in favour of the RGL, otherwise the plans would have been set aside long ago and there would be no referendum. The second point is nonsense, as the A44 won’t be a terminus. The RGL will continue further west to the towns of Katwijk and Noordwijk, both of which are right on the beach and are visited by many Leiden citizens during summer.

2. The RGL will be much more expensive. The RGL will cost the city 40 million euros and that will certainly become more.

Why is that an argument against? If they would have said the RGL will be too expensive–as in the city cannot afford to spend 40 million euros, or the RGL won’t be worth such expenses, or the boost to the local economy will be less than the costs–that would be a valid point. Simply saying that the RGL will be expensive and will probably surpass the current estimate is not a reason to not build it.

3. The RGL will be bad for the bus lines. We will not be able anymore to travel by bus from the city’s outer parts to the Breestraat [a major shopping street].

That’s a valid point. The Breestraat is currently served by at least a dozen bus lines, all of which run through its entire length. The plans are for the RGL to run through this street, thus forcing the buses to take a different route.

4. The RGL will be bad for bicycle traffic. The light rail will force the 15,000 cyclists passing through the Breestraat each day to take a different route.

I can’t verify that number, so I’ll just assume it’s accurate. Other than that, this argument makes no sense. The Breestraat will remain accessible to cyclists, although the capacity might indeed go down a bit. But what’s the problem if some people have to take a different route? Assuming there will be a good alternative, with wide and well-paved bike lanes, I don’t see one.

5. The RGL will be bad for the shops in the Breestraat. The light rail will create an unsafe situation for pedestrians. Bringing new supplies to the shops will become a problem.

The Breestraat is currently open for regular traffic outside of normal shop opening hours, to allow new supplies to be brought in by truck or car. That will be more difficult if the RGL is constructed, but I’m quite sure there will remain a way. The point about the Breestraat becoming unsafe for pedestrians is nonsense. First of all, there are up 58 buses an hour running through this street at the moment (29 in either direction). The RGL will run at most sixteen times an hour (eight times in either direction) and all the buses will disappear. Secondly, a tram moves much more predictably than a bus. Thirdly, its speed will be limited to 15 kph (10 mph), which is no faster than the buses currently go.

6. The RGL will lead to chaos elsewhere in the city. The traffic load from the buses in the Breestraat will move to other streets.

That’s a good thing if you travel through the Breestraat a lot and a bad thing if you travel through those other streets a lot. Overall, though, this should work out pretty much neutral, so it’s not a good point against the RGL.

7. The RGL is not safe enough. The RGL will run too fast and the safety precautions are insufficient.

The RGL’s running speed is still open for discussion and should not be an issue here. Besides, the speeds currently planned seem slow and safe enough to me. I have no idea what safety precautions are meant here. The nay camp might be right that they are insufficient, but this point would be much stronger with some examples.

8. The RGL vehicles are too large for downtown Leiden. The city simply has narrow streets.

The vehicles will only be slightly wider than the buses currently used. They will be longer, but if that’s the perceived problem, the argument should say so.

9. The RGL won’t solve any problems; rather, it will create new ones. Traffic congestion will only get worse.

It’s impossible to predict how the RGL will impact traffic exactly, so these statements are based on presumptions at best, and guesses at worst. Either way, this is another poor argument.

10. It [solving traffic problems] can be done better and cheaper. Improve the bus services, improve car parking, and stimulate the use of bicycles. We have to adapt the traffic to the city, not the other way around. No train through the city!

The RGL is much close to a tram than to a train. Trams are working great in other cities, so why not in Leiden? Stimulating the use of bicycles won’t help a lot, I think. Many people simply don’t want to give up the comfort of their car, and people travelling to and from places outside the city can’t travel by bike. What exactly should be improved about the bus services and the car parking? Without specifics, it’s hard to buy these arguments. The point about having to adapt traffic to the city is nothing more than an empty statement that sort of sounds nice, but doesn’t mean anything.

So, out of then ten argument used by the nay camp, only one is really good and two make some sense. The rest are badly formulated, insufficiently exemplified, or just plain nonsense. Let’s see how the yay camp does. Their arguments are more scattered throughout their site, so I’ll just collect a few.

The traffic load will continue to grow, so high-quality public transport is needed to keep the centre of Leiden accessible. The RGL is part of a larger plan to reduce traffic congestion in and around Leiden. The city will also invest in new car parking facilities and new or improved roads.

While all of that is undoubtedly true, none of it provides any specific arguments in favour of the RGL.

The RGL will allow many people to easily reach the city centre. Parking facilities will be built at several of the RGL stops outside the city, so people don’t have to travel by car all the way.

The first point it true and is a valid argument. The second point sounds nice in theory, but there are countless examples in other cities of these park & ride facilities not helping all that much.

The Breestraat will go from 58 buses to 16 RGL vehicles an hour. The double bus lane will be replaced by a single RGL track.

They forget to mention that the RGL will require a double track at the stop halfway through the Breestraat, leaving rather little space for cyclists and pedestrians. They also don’t say anything about the effects of the surrounding streets, where those 58 buses will have to go through instead.

Travelling by tram is more comfortable, faster and more reliable than travelling by bus. The RGL is more environment-friendly and less noisy than a bus.

The number of buses is unlikely to go down by much, so the overall load on the environment will increase after all. The RGL will provide a faster connection to and from locations outside the city than the buses currently do, but inside the city limits it won’t make any differences. Since the buses won’t run through the Breestraat anymore, travel times to the centre of this street will increase for all people without an RGL stop nearby. The comfort level of trams is equal to that of buses and trams are definitely less reliable than buses. I used trams and buses for five years to get to university in Amsterdam, and the tram services were interrupted much more often than the bus services.

The shops in Leiden get fifty percent of their income from people outside Leiden. The RGL will bring more people to Leiden, thus boosting the local economy.

That’s true.

An indepent study showed that traffic will stay equally safe or become safer along the entire RGL track.

But what about the surrounding streets, in particular those where the bus routes will move to?

The RGL will provide a fast and easy way of going to the beach, with no more traffic jams on the way there or back.

That’s again true, making for a score of two out of seven in terms of good arguments, plus two or three that have partial merit. That’s a better score than the opposition, but still rather disappointing. If people are so strongly in favour or against the RGL, why can’t they come up with better arguments?

In a few weeks, the people of the city of Leiden will get to say yes or no to the construction of a new light rail track through the city centre. The referendum, scheduled for March 7, will be binding if at least thirty percent of the citizens cast their vote.

I really wish the city council had chosen not to hold a referendum. There are a few things in the world of politics that I’m strongly opposed to. One is the ever-growing focus on the politicians’ personalities rather than their plans. Sure, personality is important to some degree, but the road a president (or any politician) will follow depends much more on their agenda than on their looks or how easily they talk. Fortunately the situation in the Netherlands in this regard is not quite as bad as in, say, the US, but it’s clearly going that way.

Anyway, the second thing in politics I can’t stand are referendums. Common people simply are very ill suited to make such big decisions. If they even fully understand the question and the consequences of yes and no, they still are far from sufficiently informed to make a choice. I certainly am, and there are countless Leiden citizens who took less time to delve into the matter at hand.

Let’s face it, we elect city councils and parliaments and whatnot for a reason: to govern our towns and countries, because we–the common folk–don’t have time to do so. We’re busy producing food, or building technology, or teaching the next generation, or doing science, and so on. I’m quite happy doing my bit of research into how stars and planets are formed, while politicians look after the smooth running of Leiden and the Netherlands.

If I get stuck in my research, I’ll ask my supervisor or a fellow PhD student. I certainly won’t consult a member of the city council, or anyone else who knows nothing about astrochemistry. Why, then, do politicians feel the need to consult non-experts when they get stuck?

It seems like a nice idea to get everyone’s input on a question as important as whether or not to build a light rail track through downtown Leiden, but it really isn’t. Oh, before I go on, let me briefly explain what this light rail project entails. Leiden is currently served by normal railways to the north, south and east, providing fast connections to Schiphol Airport and major cities like Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Haarlem. An extensive network of buses connects the various parts of Leiden itself, as well as the surrounding towns and villages which are not served by a railway. The proposed light rail–a kind of tram/train hybrid–will run roughly east-west through Leiden and will extend to some semi-large towns on either side. Transits between those towns and key locations inside Leiden–such as the railway station, the university and college campuses, the hospital, and the shopping district–will be reduced if the light rail is built. The benefit for Leiden citizens rarely travelling out of the city is not so clear, and that’s one source of controversy. Another is the fact that part of the route will go through the historic city centre and the shopping district and no one really knows how that will work out. Some say it will create a dangerous situation for pedestrians and cyclists; others say the situation will become safer than it currently is.

So, as I was saying, it’s a bad idea to let the public decide whether or not the light rail should be built. For one thing, almost nobody knows enough about the project to make an informed decision. For another, some people will use the referendum to voice their feelings on the current city council’s policy as a whole–but that’s an entirely different issue. (A prime example of the latter happening was the Dutch referendum on the European Constitution, which many used to show their discontent with the government at that time.)

Don’t I want to have a say in a project that could have major consequences for my hometown? No, I don’t, really. I had my say when I cast my vote for the city council last year. Now it’s up to my political party of choice to represent my interests in front of the other parties. Politicians, please do your job, and let me do mine.