The Federal Office for Spatial Development is regularly drawing scenarios and forecasts for Swiss passenger and goods traffic. Current forecasts for goods traffic and for passenger traffic are already available10. If the key factors that influence traffic patterns change, so too will traffic itself. Scenarios can be used to illustrate these various potential shifts. Individual scenarios are used as the basis for forecasts that show us how the future might look if the major traffic determinants were to shift in a given direction.
The purposes of the forecasts are the following:
• gauge: the forecasts show underlying developments, distinct trends and the sensitivity of the transport system; • measure of success: the forecasts set out the available scope for general transport policy programmes; • basis for coordination: the forecasts offer all of the agencies that are involved in the transport sphere with a common and authoritative foundation of data. In 2008, the automatic traffic counting stations operated by the Swiss Federal Roads Office recorded an average daily traffic volume on Switzerland’s motorway network of almost 6 million motor vehicles. The network of automatic traffic counting stations now covers 183 stretches of motorway, and last year 137 of these delivered a full set of data.