Project

Effectiveness and efficiency of traffic-control measures at heavy-traffic locations

The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment and the Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development joined forces in an effort to ascertain the best approaches to mitigating the negative impact of traffic at heavy-traffic locations.

Legislation passed by the Federal Council in 2009 stipulates a sufficient degree of efficiency and effectiveness as a condition for the introduction of environmental protection measures. The scope of the legislation includes measures introduced at heavy-traffic locations such as shopping centers and recreational centers. The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and the Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) commissioned EBP and Interface Schweiz GmbH to evaluate the impact of various traffic-control measures, including limiting the number of parking spaces, parking-space management and traffic modeling.

For its part, EBP conducted a survey of the effectiveness of measures that had been implemented by the Swiss cantons. A meta-evaluation of existing studies was conducted to provide a baseline of reliable data. The main part of the study, the impact analysis, included estimates of the impact of the traffic-control measures on air quality, noise pollution and other factors. The study indicates the effectiveness of the measures with respect to various impact parameters, as well as the efficiency of the measures relative to one another.

The federal authorities have made the study available to the cantons as a basis for their implementation and compliance efforts.

Picture Credits: Roland Fischer, Zurich (Switzerland), CC-BY-SA-3.0

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