Skip to main content

Switzerland to improve traffic flow by 2020

The Swiss federal office for roads, Astra, has announced plans to implement a series of measures by 2020 to ease traffic flow on roads and to prevent congestion Plans include limited use of the emergency lanes for some traffic in peak hours, bans on overtaking for trucks, and a temporary reduction to the maximum speed on heavily congested roads, as well as a targeted management at traffic lights. The measures will be implemented according to the degree of congestion on the national roads. There will also
August 21, 2013 Read time: 1 min
The Swiss federal office for roads, Astra, has announced plans to implement a series of measures by 2020 to ease traffic flow on roads and to prevent congestion

Plans include limited use of the emergency lanes for some traffic in peak hours, bans on overtaking for trucks, and a temporary reduction to the maximum speed on heavily congested roads, as well as a targeted management at traffic lights. The measures will be implemented according to the degree of congestion on the national roads. There will also be an improved disclosure of traffic news via the radio and information boards.

Astra has not disclosed the costs of the proposed measures, but has revealed that development on the emergency lane to accommodate for more traffic amounts to US$5.41 million per kilometre.

Related Content

  • Swiss show traffic management control system at ITS World Congress
    October 18, 2012
    The Swiss Federal Roads Office (FEDRO), as regulator of roads issues and as constructor and operator of motorways, will present its project for a traffic management control system based on a service oriented architecture called INA (Integrated Applications). The regional traffic management centre of Zurich (RL-VRZ) will demonstrate how cooperation between the canton, the cities of Zurich and Winterthur, as well as the management of the national roads in the agglomeration of Zurich, works.
  • Cost benefit: just $25 boosts pedestrian safety in Florida
    April 29, 2019
    A relatively straightforward change to the way that pedestrians cross the street in a Florida city has made a significant safety improvement. And what’s more, it was cheap, finds David Crawford Installing a lead pedestrian interval (LPI) system at 25 central business district signalised intersections in the Florida city of Lakeland has cut numbers of incidents involving pedestrians by some 60% - at a cost of US$25 for 30 minutes' work, according to traffic operations manager Angelo Rao.
  • Emissions reductions targets to have major impact on transport
    October 28, 2015
    As bold moves aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been introduced in California, David Crawford looks at the ramifications for transportation. California Governor Jerry Brown’s recent dramatic raising of the bar on emissions reduction policy for the state has won him praise from Japan, Australia, Europe and the secretariat of the critical UN conference on climate change being held in Paris in November/December 2015. His April 2015 executive order aimed at bringing emissions to 40% below 1990 lev
  • Experts see a trend towards BRT globally
    November 20, 2014
    Bus rapid transit has grown by 383 percent in the last ten years, with hundreds of systems in dozens of countries qualifying as true BRT, according to new data released by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. While costs vary across nations, BRT capital costs are generally less than ten per cent of the cost of metro, and 30-60 per cent of the cost of light rail. BRT can also be implemented much more quickly that rail-based transit, allowing systems to be created and expanded quickly t