The future development of rail infrastructure (ZEB) programme is a rail expansion package of the Swiss Confederation and the successor programme of Rail 2000. ZEB was approved by the Swiss Parliament in 2009. It currently includes around 85 infrastructure projects costing around CHF 5.2 billion (prices based on 04/2005). 

ZEB’s main aim is to provide passenger and freight services customers with more frequent services. This involves completing the hub-and-spoke system, creating extra capacity for passenger services and providing train path capacity of a competitive quality (transport times, reliability, profiles) for freight services.

The federal decree on expansion step 2035 entered into force on 1 January 2020 and the then-current service concept was replaced by the 2035 service concept (AK35). The ZEB expansion projects aim to meet the ZEB service objectives which are also required for the expansion step 2035 and have been incorporated into AK35.

Over 90% of ZEB projects are currently being implemented or are at an even more advanced stage.

The following projects are of vital importance in eliminating the major bottlenecks:

• Expansion of the Lausanne rail nodal point and fourth platform for Lausanne–Renens 
• Four-track expansion Olten–Aarau (Eppenberg Tunnel) 
• Performance improvement on the Zürich–Winterthur–St. Gallen line
• Expansion of the Liestal rail nodal point (four-track expansion)
• Access routes to the Gotthard and Ceneri base tunnels (incl. double track in Walchwil)
• The separation of traffic flows in Wylerfeld and the access routes to Gürbetal and Bern-Thun