Mapping the Swiss Road and Rail Infrastructure Planning Process and Identifying Potential Areas for Improvement

The Swiss transportation infrastructure planning process, like all infrastructure planning processes, requires that the organizations involved determine how societal needs will change over time, how the current infrastructure may accommodate these needs and which interventions will best help modify the infrastructure if modification is required. This is challenging due to the divergence in needs of society, the many different organizations involved in the process, the long duration of the process and the iterative nature of the process. By addressing the efficiency of these processes, society’s changing needs will be accommodated more quickly. Efforts to improve infrastructure planning processes, however, lack an overarching view of the process and therefore cannot optimally improve the process. The work presented in this paper addresses this gap by modeling the Swiss road and rail infrastructure planning process for the first time, assessing its ability to meet societal needs, and making proposals for improvement. This is done by modeling the relevant portions of the planning process, analyzing how decisions are made within the process, and identifying challenges and opportunities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. These challenges and opportunities are put in context using specific case studies in the canton of Zürich. The proposed opportunities for improvement are the adoption of an early planning network-benefit appraisal tool, the establishment of a coordinating body to align the many organizations involved, the systematic explicit consideration of the uncertainty related to planning decisions and the consideration for the time required for planning process tasks. It is suspected that these improvements would help policymakers shape planning processes to better enable planning objectives to be met efficiently and effectively.