Through an expansion of the infrastructure for the railway and the combined transport and also through the funding, inter alia, by an extended truck toll scheme and by increased rail track charges: That is how Germany can shift a significant part of the freight transport services from the road onto the railway until 2030. By doing so, the national economy makes a contribution to the international climate protection and could reduce environmental costs within Germany. Furthermore, there is a benefit due to the user financing regarding domestic added value and employment – not least because of the contribution coming from foreign consignors, consignees and transport operators.

The Alpine regions still face a high need for action to improve the environmental situation along the transit corridors. Air quality limits are exceeded, the modal shift from road to rail is stagnating (with the expection of Gotthard). Thus, the region Rhône-Alpes, the Provinces of Bolzano and Trento, the Regions of Aosta Valley and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Piemonte, the Canton of Ticino, Central Switzerland, the Land of Tyrol and the Accademia Europea di Bolzano successfully continued their cooperation in 2015 to further specify elements of their common transport strategy. Especially, a proposition – developed by iMONITRAF! - for a Toll Plus system from the perspective of the regions was documented in an in-depth report, which was discussed on technical as well as political level in 2015.

Not only road traffic, but also non-road mobile machinery like construction machines, agricultural vehicles or garden-care appliances emit significant quantities of air pollutants. The updated non-road inventory of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) quantifies these emissions for Switzerland and shows past and future trends. For the calculations with the INFRAS Non-road Emissions Model, a large amount of data was processed, which was compiled with the commendable support of numerous stakeholders. The results are available as a report of the FOEN series «Environmental studies» as well as via an online database.

In order to define traffic coverage quality, there are currently various transport mode based studies. In Planning, so far, the most common are the public transport quality classes (ÖV-Güteklassen). However, there has been a lack of an intermodal view, i.e. motorised private transport, public transport as well as pedestrian and cycle traffic. In the present research work (VSS 2011/106) INFRAS and Ernst Basler + Partner demonstrate the requirements, the methodical approaches and limitations through to standardised integrated coverage qualities  in terms of a baseline report. A methodical two-step concept with quantitative und qualitative criterias was tested using case studies and in principle considered suitable. As a final step, a draft for a basic principle norm was developed.

A new report of the Swiss Federal Council on civil aviation policy shall indicate where the future challenges of the civil aviation policy are to be expected. In this context, INFRAS has created an update of the first report «Civil Aviation and Sustainability» which was published in 2008. The updated assessment shows the following conclusions:  - With respect to the economic dimension, the trends may largely be regarded as positive. A main future challange are capacity restrictions at national airports.  - With regard to the environment dimension, despite the facts that improvements have been made, deficits continue to exist, primarily relating to noise and impacts on the climate.  - In the social dimension, the assessment is mixed: while safety and security are viewed positively, there are still some deficits regarding public health and options for residential development in the vicinity of the national airports.

EcoTransIT is an online emission calculator and enables users the quantification of energy consumption and emissions of worldwide freight transport by trucks, trains, ships and airplanes. INFRAS in collaboration with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU) Heidelberg is in charge of the development of the methodology of EcoTransIT while the programming of the tool is conducted by IVE mbH Hannover. The EcoTransIT consortium consisting of DB Schenker, Gebrüder Weiss, Gefco, Geodis, Green Cargo, Greencarrier, Hamburg Süd, Hapag-Lloyd, Austrian Railways, SBB, SNCF, System Alliance Europe, Trenitalia and International Union of Railways (UIC) is responsible for the funding.The methodology of EcoTransIT has been currently revised substantially by INFRAS and IFEU. The calculation of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission is now carried out in accordance with the new European standard EN 16258. For each calculation EcoTransIT provides a declaration fulfilling the requirements of the standard EN 16258. Furthermore the emission factors used particularly for the calculation of air freight have been updated fundamentally.Energy consumption and emissions of transport chains can be calculated free of charge by following the link: www.ecotransit.org.

Participation means being able to contribute and taking part in shaping and decision-making. Participation is a very common formula in our democratic system and it has also become considerably more important in the realisation of transport projects. As part of the research project SVI 2004/005 of the Swiss Association of Traffic Engineers SVI, INFRAS, together with ecoptima and kcw have developed a manual «Participation in Transport Projects».

The study calculates the external and social environmental, accident and health-related effects of transport in Switzerland in 2010. In doing so, previous calculations are subject to a methodological review, and recalculated using fully updated data sources. The external costs of air and waterborne transport as well as non-motorised transport (pedestrian and cycle traffic) are calculated for the first time.Aggregated across the four modes of transport, total external costs come to over CHF 9,400 million for 2010. At CHF 5,500 million, private motorised road transport is the main originator of these external costs, followed by road freight transport at CHF 1,000 million. Air transport resulted in external costs of CHF 920 million, while rail transport accounts for CHF 740 million and waterborne transport generated external costs of CHF 57 million. In addition to external costs of CHF 900 million, non-motorised transport generates external health benefits worth CHF 1,300 million.

Based on a newly created pool containing data of the Road Traffic Accident Register, other registers of the Swiss Federal Roads Office as well as from various other data sources, the influence of vehicle properties on road accidents are being examined: Passenger cars are involved in an accident every 900'000 km on average and take part in the vast majority of all accidents on Swiss roads. Trams show a comperatively high accident rate, however, they are mostly operating in heavy traffic in urban areas where interactions with other road users are frequent. Trams are very rarely identified as the responsible party in accidents. Also high accident rates are observed with e-bikes (pedelecs). Compared to conventional bicycles their accident rates are considerably higher. The accident rates of motorcycles are more than twice as high as the ones of passenger cars.