Moaning about the trains, again.

Hey America! England! Canada! Germany! Are you in the least bit interested in the woes of trying to commute to work via Koleje Mazowieckie? [Resounding chorus of "NO!"]

At the risk of alienating the 58% of my readers who don't live in Poland - and indeed the 24% of my Polish readers who don't live in Mazowsze - let me tell you of my commuting woes from these past two days.

Yesterday: I turn up at W-wa Jeziorki station in good time for my train to town. "Bing-bong! The Koleje Mazowieckie train from Radom to Warszawa Wschodnia is running 20 minutes late. The delay time is subject to change [może ulec zmianie]". I toss a mental coin: take the bus to the metro (30 minutes) or wait for the train? Strategy... Magpies and lab rats are good at this kind of thing. Decision taking. I wait for the train. Sure enough, the train arrives, a mere 19 minutes late. Sardines? Anchovies, more like. I manage to board, using a modicum of sharp elbow. The train departs. Two stops up the line, at Okęcie - it breaks down. Terminally. The guard ushers off all the passengers onto a forlorn platform.

Above: "...the 'hound broke down and left the folks stranded in downtown Birmingham..."

More strategy. Turn left, walk a few hundred metres, catch a rare 148 to the airport and a bus from there? Or turn right, walk a few hundred metres, catch a rare 165 to Galeria Motoków (for the best mokoty in town) and a tram from there? I opt for the second option, arriving at the bus stop four minutes after one's departed and 11 minutes before the next one's due [what's 'due' in Polish?] to arrive. No alternative - I walk. And 15 minutes later I reach the tram stop, just missing a number 17 (the one I want). A long wait for the next one. I take a number 18 tram to the Metro, catch that, finally arriving at my meeting with a British company a mere 15 minutes late. (And Poland's keen to court foreign investment with transport infrastructure like this? And Minister Grabarczyk gets to keep his job?)

Today. Turn up at W-wa Powiśle. Westbound trains suspended due to an ambulance being called for a passenger. OK, it happens. So if the suburban trains aren't working - the double deckers that by-pass Powiśle, Śródmieście and Ochota should still be calling at Centralna. They are, the train's on time. But it stops at W-wa Rakowiec for some 20 minutes. No announcement, explanation, apology...

Finally, I arrive back at Jeziorki. Usual dilemma: walk home (12 mins) or wait for bus? There's a 715 due in three minutes. I wait. Three minutes pass, and I can see its lights in the distance. Just as it reaches the level crossing... the barriers descend, right in front of it. We wait. Five minutes. No train. (I can hear a horn in the distance.) Eight minutes... and a slow coal train (40 wagons long) makes its way past the crossing. The last wagon passes. Barriers up? Not a bit of it. Another coal train (this time on the fast, electrified line) makes its way northbound past Jeziorki. Now, had I had this information a quarter of an hour earlier - I'd have walked. Why did the level crossing attendant lower the barriers a full eight minutes before the first train was due? To annoy the bus passengers no doubt.

And another thing. The timetables shown on the internet (rozklad.pkp.pl) bear little relation to those displayed at the station. While at W-wa Centralna, the 19:00 departure was shown on the platform indicator as setting off at 19:07 - it left at 19:00. Chaos, indifference - a system falling apart. Rozkład aptly means 'timetable' as well as 'decay', 'decomposition', 'putrefaction'.

After two days of abysmal service on the trains, should I take the bus and metro? This morning I took the bus (209 from Jeziorki). Once it got to ul Puławska, once it ground down into that near stationary morass of out-of-towners struggling to force their way into the nation's capital, progress was so slow that I jumped off the bus at Bogatki and proceeded on foot to the next stop, Żolny, and re-boarded the same bus. For the hell of it. Just to prove it's faster on foot than being bogged down in a vehicle on Puławska.

So. This is the conundrum facing the million-plus Mazovians who needed to get into the city centre from the outer suburbs and exurbs of Warsaw, and it is a public policy challenge for the city authorities. One easy win would be to paint a bus lane down ul. Puławska and send a conveyor-belt of buses, one after the other, a veritable Red Ball Express. [There's an economic war going on. We need to get workers into and out cities quickly to win it.] And damn the one-per-car short-distance commuter. Especially those jamming up the roads in their black SUVs with darkened rear windows. Po cholerę, Panie?

This time last year:
Warsaw streets - Dolna, Polna, Rolna, Smolna, Wolna. Lost?

This time three years ago:
Ditches, landscapes, autumn

This time four years ago:
Golden autumn, Łazienki Park