Polish national railway infrastructure manager PKP PLK has announced the construction of a new rail tunnel. The tunnel, Poland’s longest tunnel yet at approximately 3,8 kilometres, will significantly reduce travel times and boost connectivity in southern Poland.
The construction of the tunnel is part of a larger infrastructure project between Kraków and Nowy Sacz in southern Poland. The project is financed by the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund and envisages €444 million worth of rail upgrades. They are supposed to be finished by 2026 and will bring 150-year-old infrastructure up to modern standards.
The new tunnel, in combination with modern and electrified railway tracks between Nowy Sacz and the village of Chabówka, is supposed to drastically improve travel between Nowy Sacz and Kraków. “We are going to seriously straighten out something that no longer fits the new conditions. Travelling at a speed of 60 km/h is not something that passengers or carriers are interested in. With this investment, we are strongly interfering with what was built almost 150 years ago. Looking at the whole thing, it can be graphically shortened to one sentence: from Krakow to Nowy Sącz not in three hours, but in one hour over the next few years,” says a government official from the Ministry of Infrastructure.
High speed
The maximum speed along the route will be boosted to 100 and 160 kilometres per hour for freight and passenger trains, respectively. At the moment, the quickest train between the two towns takes over two and a half hours. After the upgrades are completed, this time is supposed to be down to 60 minutes.
Apart from the planned tunnel and rail upgrades, the project also envisions the construction of ten viaducts and twelve bridges in order to remove infrastructure intersections. According to PKP PLK, this will improve traffic safety in the area.
RailFreight Summit 2024
Are you interested in learning more about the Polish rail freight market, its performance and significance for the broader CEE region and the best practices adopted to tackle current challenges? Then the RailFreight Summit 2024, taking place between 15 and 17 April in Warsaw, Poland, is the perfect occasion to connect with industry professionals and dive deeper into the topic.
This year’s edition of the RailFreight Summit turns the spotlight on trending issues like the TEN-T expansion, connections with Ukraine, significant projects like RailBaltica and their potential for the creation of more efficient logistics corridors, Poland’s role as a logistics node and a performance assessment of intra-European and Eurasian services.
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Also read:
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- Polish operator bills farmers blocking its tracks: 1,3 million PLN for a day
- Polish rail freight volumes drop by 3,2% in 2023
