With one of the densest railway infrastructure in Europe, Polish Railways, PKP PLK, carries out ambitious development programmes, especially for high-speed. Moreover, Poland focuses on upgrading the sections of Trans-European corridors crossing its territory anticipating the increasing national and international passenger, but most of all, freight transport share.
With a total length of 19,276 km, of which 5,500 km represent important lines for the international railway traffic, the Polish railway infrastructure is one of the railway infrastructures with the highest potential from the point of view of the development projects. The 5,500 km of railways are part of the Trans-European Transport Corridors, as well as of the AGC and AGTC networks.
“The aim of the investment programme carried out by PKP PLK is to modernise the railway lines for speeds of 160 – 200 km/h, on the TEN-T network, to rehabilitate the lines in conformity with the design para-meters in case their modernisation requires higher costs and the results are insufficient. The objective also includes the construction of new lines, among which high-speed lines, provided that the modernisation of lines will not have the expected results in terms of increasing the competitiveness of railways”, declared Miroslaw Kanclerz, Deputy Director International Cooperation Department – PKP PLK and Vice President of RailNetEurope, on the occasion of the Railway Days 2011 Summit.
Another important project for Poland is Rail Baltica and the development of this project on Polish territory implies as first step the modernisation of Warsaw-Bialystock-Lithuanian border, planned for 2011-2014 and as second step, the preliminary works for the 2014-2020 modernisation period.
The first tender on the modernisation of line Warsaw-Bialystock-Lithuanian border, section WarsawRembertow – Zielonka – Tluszcz (Sadowne), was announced on September 24, 2011, based on the feasibility study concluded in August 2011.
Another objective of PKP PLK is the construction of high-speed lines and their connection with the European network. The most important project is Line “Y” (Warsaw, Lodz, Poznan and Wroclaw). The modernisation of conventional lines is also scheduled to facilitate the connection with Line “Y”. Also, the Main Central Line, connected to Krakow, will be adapted for speeds of 220 km/h.
The PKP PLK said that the two of the nine freight corridors set up by Regulation 913/2010 cross Poland, the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor (Gdynia- Katowice- Ostrava/ Zilina- Bratislava/ Vienna/ Klagenfurt-Udine- Venice/ Trieste/ Bologna/ Ravenna/ Graz-Moribor-Ljubljana-Koper/ Trieste) and the Central East-West Corridor Bremerhaven/ Rotterdam/ Antwerpen-Aachen/ Berlin-Warsaw-Terespol (Poland-Belarus border/Kowno).
The new set-up corridors will become a priority topic on Poland’s agenda concerning the railway infrastructure development and increasing transport operations at the Eastern border, especially to Baltic States and further to Asia.
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