Moti­on Ditt­li 20.3221 “Trans­port­ing goods more effi­ci­ent­ly by rail through auto­ma­ti­on” was adopted by the Swiss par­lia­ment on Decem­ber 17, 2020. It ins­tructs the Fede­ral Coun­cil to sub­mit to Par­lia­ment “a con­cept for the finan­cing and for the coor­di­na­ted imple­men­ta­ti­on of tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions, which in par­ti­cu­lar enable (par­ti­al) auto­ma­ti­on of the last mile in rail freight trans­port and sim­pli­fy the manage­ment of the road-rail inter­face in mul­ti­mo­dal logi­stics chains”.

With this con­cept, the finan­cing and imple­men­ta­ti­on of the tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions – in con­junc­tion with fur­ther mea­su­res (cf. Moti­on Ditt­li 20.3222) – rail freight trans­port, in par­ti­cu­lar wagon­load trans­port, is to be enab­led to inte­gra­te more stron­gly into mul­ti­mo­dal logi­stics chains and thus to be able to make a signi­fi­cant con­tri­bu­ti­on to the cli­ma­te tar­gets adopted by the Fede­ral Coun­cil on 28.08.2019.

The start­ing point for incre­asing the mar­ket share of rail freight is to signi­fi­cant­ly increase its pro­duc­ti­vi­ty and thus com­pe­ti­ti­ve­ness. It applies,

• to upgrade the rail sys­tem and enable signi­fi­cant pro­duc­ti­vi­ty increa­ses in rail freight transport,
• to make the ser­vices of the rail sys­tem as a whole more fle­xi­ble, simp­ler, more relia­ble and more cost-effective,
• to offer cus­to­mers more attrac­ti­ve ser­vices in the value chain of the trans­port and logi­stics market,
• moder­ni­ze shun­ting ope­ra­ti­ons and crea­te attrac­ti­ve and sus­tainable job profiles,
• to com­pen­sa­te for the eli­mi­na­ti­on or reduc­tion of many rail-rela­ted goods,
• to open up new markets
• and thus to enable a sus­tainable deve­lo­p­ment of rail freight transport.

The cen­tral ele­ment of the auto­ma­ti­on of rail freight trans­port is the digi­tal auto­ma­tic cou­pler (DAC) → fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on on DAC. Within the frame­work of the Euro­pean DAC Deli­very Pro­gram­me (EDDP), the various initia­ti­ves for the imple­men­ta­ti­on of DAC are bund­led and advan­ced on a Euro­pean level. With the DAC4EU pro­ject, the fin­dings of which flow direct­ly into the EDDP, an indus­try con­sor­ti­um of the rail freight sec­tor in the EU with the par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on of Switz­er­land has laun­ched the DAC migra­ti­on pro­ject with power and data lines. Based on Artic­le 10 of the Freight Trans­port Act (GÜTG; SR 742.41), the fede­ral govern­ment can pro­vi­de finan­cial sup­port for invest­ments in tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions in freight trans­port. We are now deve­lo­ping a con­cept for the finan­cing and coor­di­na­ti­on of a large-scale intro­duc­tion of new technologies.