The right-wing party, which has no elected members at the national or cantonal level, is attempting a return to the national scene with the proposals, made public by the federal gazette on Tuesday.

The party has until November 28th 2014 to collect the necessary signatures to put the issues to a national vote.

Under an initiative called “free driving instead of mega traffic jams”, it is seeking to add lanes to highway routes that are now choked with traffic.

In particular, its is calling for six-lane motorways on the routes between Geneva-Lausanne, Berne-Zurich and Winterthur-Töss-Winterthur-Ost.

It also wants extra lanes through the Gotthard tunnel.

The Motorists’ Party wants the maximum speed on Swiss motorways raised to 130 kilometres an hour from the current 120 km/h.

But it also seeks higher speed limits on other roads — 100 km/h on major roads and a 50 km/h limit within municipal areas.

Additionally, it is campaigning for all money from road taxes (vignettes) and vehicle fuel taxes to be 100 percent applied to the construction and maintenance of roads and not to defray public transport costs or to feed federal coffers.

Founded in 1985, the Motorists’ Party, which once elected as many as eight MPs in the early 1990s, changed its name to the Swiss Liberty Party from 1994 to 2009.

It then took back its original name and is now bidding for a comeback.

Since the party (Auto Partei in German or Parti des Automobilistes in French) lost representation in parliament, “free mobility” and the interests of motorists have been persistently under attack, it argues on its German-language website.

The Motorists' Party is hoping that public anger over frequent traffic jams on heavily used motorways will gain it support.

In terms of elected representatives, the party can currently count just one member at the municipal level, Werner Pauli, who sits on the Bern city legislative council.

Since last year, the Motorists' Party has resurrected wings in the cantons of Aargau, Basel-Country, Bern. Lucerne, Solothurn, Thurgau and Zurich.