Albert Rösti wants an overhaul and admits “unfortunate” additional costs

The missing 14 billion for rail development caused several elected representatives of the Council of States to react on Tuesday. Federal Councilor Albert Rösti believes that the time has come to take stock of major railway projects for the next 20 years.

The head of the Federal Department of Transport was responding to a question from Charles Juillard (Center/JU) who was concerned about the growing financing needs for the next stage of development.

The recent announcement of an additional need of 14 billion in addition to the 16.4 billion planned led several other senators to question the minister.

Rösti was not aware of this figure

Albert Rösti initially admitted that such additional costs were “unfortunate”.

But it has not yet been possible to analyze the 80 projects in detail. This work is in progress. He himself was not aware of this figure. Before the summer, he had a graph indicating that additional resources would be available for new projects from 2033. The situation has changed.

The new projects that have been added in the 2035 development stage are weighing on funding. It is now a question of whether we can abandon certain projects and where. “I would like, with a concrete recommendation from the Federal Council, that you could ultimately decide what the right measure is,” declared the Bernese addressing the senators.

Define a global concept

“I think it will be difficult to simply say that we are maintaining the pace of these rail infrastructure projects,” however, added the Minister of Transport.

In his opinion, it is now necessary to define a “basic concept of what we want to achieve over the next 20 years”.

“Once again, it is clear to me that it can also contain new projects,” said the Federal Councilor. Ultimately, the decision rests with Parliament. “But we want to analyze it properly.”

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