Strategic development program for rail infrastructure
Plans by the Swiss Federal Office of Transport and the Swiss Federal Railways for a further development of the rail system in Switzerland beyond the year 2030 are referred to as Bahn 2030 . Bahn 2030 was planned as the successor project of Bahn 2000 and the future development of the railway infrastructure (ZEB). With the new designation Expansion Step 2025 , the proposal for Railway 2030 has been redesigned by the Swiss government; the new expansion program provides for the expansion of the railway network in stages. With the message on FABI, a first expansion step was also determined in 2025 . It contains rather smaller projects, so that the whole package comes to 6.4 billion CHF. Larger expansion projects such as the Brüttener tunnel, Lucerne underground station (new diameter railway station in Lucerne), expansion of the Lötschberg base tunnel or the heart of Basel are included in the Strategic Development Program for Railway Infrastructure, STEP for short , and will be integrated into the next expansion steps. The Federal Assembly approved the entire FABI package with the new fund, BIF and STEP in summer 2013. In the following mandatory referendum of February 2014, it was accepted by the people with over 62% yes-votes.
description
Initially, two variants with a budget of CHF 12 billion and CHF 21 billion were pursued with Bahn 2030. These should start after the completion of the ZEB projects in 2017 and extend over a period of around 25 years. With the new FABI program, the projects are planned and built in three to four expansion steps. The first is the expansion step in 2025, which the Swiss Federal Parliament decided in summer 2013 and approved in the mandatory referendum in February 2014.
For this purpose, platform extensions are to be carried out so that longer double-decker coaches can stop in Bern, Basel and Lausanne, among others . Between Basel and Lucerne, Zurich and Chur as well as Locarno and Lugano, the rail infrastructure is to be upgraded every half hour . The implementation horizon for this section is the year 2025. This should take place in parallel to the expansion measures of the NEAT and ZEB projects.
Single projects
The following projects are examined by STEP:
- Compaction of the southern foot of the Jura including the Ligerz tunnel
- Consolidation Lausanne – Geneva
- Acceleration from Lucerne to Zurich with Zimmerberg Base Tunnel II
- Half hour Bern - Visp
- Improvement of services Biel - Basel and Biel - Zurich
- Intercity Zurich– Chur every half hour
- Improvements to services Biel - Delsberg - Delle / Basel
- Relief of freight traffic in the Baden area
- Unbundling Basel Ost
- Wisenberg Tunnel (third Jura breakthrough)
- NEAT access roads in the north and south
- Brüttener Tunnel
- Siviriez - Villars-sur-Glâne
- Heitersberg Tunnel II
financing
On January 1st, 2016 the legislation for the Railway Infrastructure Fund (BIF) came into force. On the one hand, the BIF absorbs the previous fund (FinöV) and, in accordance with Article 87a paragraph 2 letter d of the Federal Constitution, is fed by the following previous and new sources (in brackets the amount in CHF million according to the 2017 budget, totaling 4,654):
- 2 VAT per mille, one of which is limited from 2018 to 2030
a maximum of 2/3 of the HVF revenues
- 9 percent of mineral oil tax revenues, limited to 2030
- 2.3 million francs from the general federal treasury, which were used until 2015 for the operation and maintenance of the infrastructure; the amount is adjusted annually in line with inflation and economic growth
- 500 million francs as a contribution from the cantons, the share of each canton is based on the number of passenger and train kilometers ordered in regional traffic [6]
- 2 percent of the income from direct federal tax from natural persons, corresponding to the additional income that resulted from the limitation of the travel cost deduction to 3,000 francs