As a country with a long tradition of transit, Switzerland wishes to take on its share of alpine transit traffic and in doing so, contribute significantly to the overall European domestic market. It insists, however, that the growing volume of traffic should be processed in the most environmentally sound way, primarily by rail. This particularly applies to transalpine transport. Transalpine road freight traffic has been expanding rapidly for many years now. This leads to traffic congestion at vulnerable points of Switzerland's road network and has harmful effects on people and the environment alike. In order to encourage more and more companies to shift their freight transport from road to rail, further action needs to be taken in parallel with existing schemes such as the heavy vehicle fee, subsidies for combined traffic, motorail services and the deregulation of rail freight traffic.