Audit office criticises Switzerland’s Verkehr’45 transport plan

Switzerland’s Federal Audit Office has criticised major weaknesses in the government’s Verkehr’45 plan to expand the rail and road networks through 2045, SRF reported. The Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications rejects the criticism.

The plan includes trains every 15 minutes between Bern and Zurich, an expansion of Lucerne railway station, the Grimsel Tunnel and six lanes on the motorway between Aarau East and Birrfeld. Other projects would be postponed, but the reasons for some of the decisions are unclear, the audit office said.

Beat Stamm, head of a division at the Federal Audit Office, said the priorities were partly incomprehensible and based on outdated data and a methodology that was also not fully understandable or up to date.

Some figures for rail projects were no longer current. For the Aigle-Leysin project, for example, investment costs had doubled since the last estimate, Stamm said, but this was not reflected in the current proposal. He added that the economic viability of some projects was therefore being overstated.

The audit office also criticised the fact that the prioritisation was based largely on a single study by ETH Zurich. Stamm said the study had been produced in a very short time despite the billions of francs involved and its implications for the future of Switzerland’s transport infrastructure. He said it was not appropriate to use such a short study to set the course for future investment.

The responsible department said the ETH Zurich study, together with assessments by federal offices, provided a good basis for decisions. It accused the audit office of broadly questioning the study and calling for a focus on formal cost-effectiveness calculations without addressing the limitations of such calculations.

The consultation on Verkehr’45 will run until October. Organisations and political parties can submit their views, and Parliament is due to consider the expansion projects next year.