Infrastructure: future of local projects

As 2024 comes to a close, a post about three infrastructure projects that will affect me in coming years. Two are big, the other huge. I'll start with the big one...

I've written many times about the railway line from Skierniewice to Łuków. Built during the Stalinist Six-Year Plan to expedite the dispatch of Red Army forces westwards, bypassing Warsaw, the line today is a major conduit for Chinese container trains. Long due for an upgrade; along many stretches, trains are limited to a top speed of 40km/h due to poor track quality.

A major bottleneck is the bridge over the Vistula at Góra Kalwaria. Built in 1950, it carries a single track. The plan is to double the bridge (as has been done over the Pilica in Warka), and to bring back passenger services to the entire line (currently, passenger trains serve only a short stretch, from Czachówek to Góra Kalwaria). EU funds from the Connecting Europe Facility are available to Poland for upgrading this line, of strategic importance to the entire continent. Plans had been prepared. But there was one drawback – the plans did not envisage a footway/cyclepath alongside the rails, to the annoyance of local people. But infrastructure operator, PKP PLK, has given way to public pressure. It looks like there will have an alternative to using the road bridge, which is 3.5km longer. This is a popular area for cyclists from Warsaw, and a river crossing here will come in handy. And drive trade.

So – assuming no delays in the project (there are always delays to projects), the new dual-track railway bridge is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2028, and this should mean that passenger services east of Góra Kalwaria will recommence. Can I hope one day to catch a train from Chynów to Pilawa?

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The second project, again covered many times on this blog, is the final opening of W-wa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) railway station after its comprehensive modernisation. In particular the underground passage linking the eight platforms of the main part of the station to Platform Nine, which is currently a ten-minute walk away. Optimally, this could be cut to seven, so still a hack. 

But the big questions for everyone coming into Warsaw along the Radom line is whether trains will return to serve central Warsaw, or whether they are condemned in perpetuity to be diverted northward via Platform Nine to Warszawa Gdańska station. I think an ideal compromise will be to send some trains this way and some  trains that way. The earliest we'll know is when the 2026 railway timetables are published.

However, while the railway part of the project, the footbridge and the underground connections, are reaching their conclusion, there's still the new tramlines that need to be laid down before the entire project becomes fully operational. This is scheduled for mid-2026. So for the meanwhile, some of the underground parts of W-wa Zachodnia will remain off limits.

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And finally, the mega-project – Warsaw's southern orbital motorway. There is still no decision as to how the A50 will run. Various plans show its course as somewhere between Piaseczno and Chynów, crossing the S7 around Tarczyn and heading east towards a new Vistula crossing. But there's still the chance that the current DK50, which is just over a kilometre at its nearest point from my działka, might be upgraded to motorway standard, doubled or tripled in width.

On the map below, issued by Poland's national-road infrastructure operator, GDDKiA, we see the grey band around Warsaw's eastern periphery. The black lines are existing roads, the red lines are roads under construction, the blue lines are roads being prepared (ie. advanced planning stages); the grey lines represent vapourware, pipe-dreams, notions of concepts. Now, look at the grey lines between the existing S7 and S17. This looks good to me; but the threat of abandoning that concept and using the course of the DK50 through Grójec and Góra Kalwaria doesn't make me happy.

My inner NIMBY is against this idea. The DK50 is currently taking less east-west transit traffic than had been the case before the A2-S2 was fully opened, with its tunnel under Ursynów and its new bridge over the Vistula, but even so, on days when the wind's from the north, traffic noise can be annoying.

At this stage, we don't know (nothing more than this report from Raport Warszawski). Fingers crossed.

This time five years ago:
West Ealing by night 

This time eight years ago:
Smog starts getting to be a big problem for Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Snow in December: A memory or figment of my imagination?

This 11 years ago:
A muddy walk along ul. Karczunkowska

This 12 years ago:
Ul. Trombity - a step closer to dry feet?

This time 13 years ago:
Matters of style

This time 15 years ago:
Real winter hits Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
This is not Mazowsze, no?