  It is argued that it is far more cost effective to carry out some projects
with medium-sized dedicated zenith telescopes rather than large steerable
telescopes, freeing the later to carry out projects that truly need them. I
show that the large number of objects observed with a surveying 4-m zenith
telescope allows one to carry out cosmological projects at low redshifts.
Examining two case studies, I show first that a variability survey would obtain
light curves for several thousands of type Ia supernovae per year up to z=1 and
easily discriminate among competing cosmological models. Finally, I discuss a
second case study, consisting of a spectrophotometric survey carried out with
interference filters, showing its power to discriminate among cosmological
models and to study the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the Universe.
