Friday 28 November 2025. The opening of the passage under Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) station. I came on Sunday to cast mine eyes upon this marvel, for which I had waited so long.
Goodness! When did work start? Six years ago or longer? It's become a blur. So many memories; of the old underground passage, reeking of the 1980s, cigarette smoke and burnt casein, and its closure; of years of inconvenience, thumbing through back-dated magazines sold for a quarter of their cover price, trying to read the printed timetables in dim light, garbled station announcements saying that my train will be arriving at a different platform to the one advertised... A commuter hellscape that... finally... is over.
In its place, a modern, bright, civilised, convenient station; escalators, lifts, digital signs showing departures in real time; and the promise of modern retail and gastronomy replacing the dives and dinginess of what I considered at the time Poland's worst railway station.
Below: lots of space in this mall....
Left: ...Disco pants and haircuts. This place has got everything! Though we'll still wait for the cafés and stores to open, soon there'll be a choice of a Starbucks, Costa and a CoffeeToGo; there'll be a Żabka (naturally), an Aldi (wow! I've never been in one, in Poland or in the UK! Wonder if they are licenced to sell alcohol, or is the shop deemed to be too close to the platforms?) A Subway, a Paul, a 1minute SmaczneGo and a Gorąco Polecam (the last one for me), and a second Scottish Restaurant (one at either end of the tunnel), a Relay, a Rossmann and a HeBe. Travellers will not be left wanting for choice, though I wonder what the opening hours of these shops and cafés will be, given that there's a gap of just 68 minutes between the last train of one day and the first train of the next.
Below: if not, there are a couple of well-stocked and reliable (contactless card) vending machines on the premises.
Below: looking west, with the old tunnel from Aleje Jerozolimskie behind me. The dip in the tunnel ahead leads down to what will be the underground tram stop when the tramline is finally completed (2026? 2027? I neither wish to believe the press releases nor to speculate). Once done – this will be marvellous. To be able to descend from your train and board a tram heading north to Wola or south to Mokotów will be a huge improvement in the travelling lives of Varsovians. For now, the passage down to the tram tunnel to the left is fenced off (and probably will continue to be for some time to come).
For my purposes, the opening of the tunnel marks a huge leap forward in being able to change trains at W-wa Zachodnia. From a 20 minute walk up and down stairs and ramps, through mud, across the busy road at the back of the station and along a corrugated canyon to reach Platform 9, cut to 15 minutes with a shorter route, down to eight minutes when the western section of the tunnel was opened in October 2024, the interchange now takes six minutes. But ultimately, the Radom line should really go back to serving W-wa Ochota, W-wa Śródmieście and W-wa Powiśle like it always had done. Changing at W-wa Zachodnia is no longer the monumental pain in the arse that it once was.
Poland is getting on with it; works take a long time, but in the end they get there (hello HS2) and things get noticeably better. Repeat consistently over a couple of decades, and the contrast between then and now is stunning.
Ultimately, vast improvements like the ones I've seen here and elsewhere across Poland's railway network over the past 28 years, demonstrates that it is possible to make rail travel more attractive to passengers. Just don't privatise it. British trains are worse than Poland's and vastly more expensive.
Below: bonus photo – Last Train to Warsaw, just leaving Chynów.
This time last year:
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