Capacity and bottleneck analyses of the Swiss north-south rail infrastructure

picture: ponte1112

21.07.07 - Ernst Basler + Partner analysed if future capacities are suffficient for Swiss north-south and Northern Italian railway.

The New Railway Link through the Alps (German: NEAT) has led to a substantial increase in the useful capacity and quality of rail goods traffic across the Alps. On the basis of updated demand forecasts, we examine in this study whether the capacities of the feed lines to the NEAT are sufficient for the forecast train numbers for goods and passenger transport.

In addition to the Swiss rail network, the area under investigation also includes the northern Italian network as far as Novara, Genoa and Milan.

The aim of the study is to identify the bottlenecks in the NEAT feeder network (separate consideration of lines and intersections) given a free choice of routes by the rail transport companies. In the case of capacity bottlenecks becoming apparent, measures will be developed to solve them. Depending on the bottleneck situation and the development in demand in the various scenarios, an evaluation will be made of whether the forecast goods traffic flow

• can be transferred to alternative NEAT feed lines that have spare capacity,
• can be helped by increasing the capacity as a result of small-scale infrastructure measures,
• can be transferred to alternative Alpine crossings with spare network capacities, or
• can be dealt with by an appropriate combination of the measures listed above.

The firms of SMA und Partner AG and Ernst Basler + Partner AG have formed a joint venture to investigate these issues.