The amount of road traffic increases year by year. In order to protect the population and environment, more road traffic should go by rail in the future. This is why the railways are being expanded. The ambitious NEAT project to construct two transalpine railways is currently under construction. It includes the Gotthard base tunnel, which at 57 km (35 miles) will be the longest in the world, and the Lötschberg base tunnel, 34.6 km (21.5 miles). The Lötschberg tunnel opened in June 2007, and the Gotthard is scheduled to open in 2016.

In another move to encourage the switch to rail, in 2001 Switzerland became the first country in Europe to introduce a tax for heavy vehicles calculated according to their weight and distance travelled.

2001 saw a further move to get freight off the roads: the start of the so-called "rolling highway," moving trucks by rail across Switzerland from the southern German city of Freiburg to Novara in northern Italy. The Lötschberg tunnel had to be specially adapted and the flatcars lowered to enable vehicles up to four meters high and 44 tonnes to use the system, which is calculated down to the last centimetre. It is hoped that in the medium term up to 350,000 trucks will use the service annually.

Swiss policy appears to be paying off. In 2005 the share of transalpine freight taken by rail stood at 65%, considerably more than in other Alpine countries.