Poland dreams of a superconnector hub

The Polish government recently dusted off plans (around since 2005) to build a central airport for the country, somewhere between Warsaw and Łódź. In this iteration, the plans are no longer for an airport, but for a 'communication hub', for intercontinental flights, high-speed rail and the motorway network. And the railway line connecting Chinese factories to Western European consumers.

The preferred location for this project is Baranów, some 40km west-south-west of Warsaw, about a third of the way to Łódź. The currently quoted cost of the Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (CPK) is 30 billion zlotys (about  £6.1 billion). The question is not really about whether or not Poland can afford it, but whether Poland needs it.

Wading through pages and pages of debate about the CPK on Skyscrapercity.com tells you more about the state of the political arguments than the economic ones. It's the lack of any serious analysis available, untainted by politics, that prompts me to write this post.

First things first. If a mega-airport is to be built, it must serve a mega-airline, one that flies hundreds of billions of passenger-kilometres annually. Airlines like Emirates, Qatar, Etihad and Turkish, are known as super-connectors, linking two very distant cities via their home hub airport. Turkey is in the process of building a brand-new super airport, to be the world's largest, with six runways, with the capacity to handle 150-200m passengers a year. This compares to London's Heathrow, which last year handled 75m passengers, or Warsaw's Okęcie, 13m passengers. Or indeed Dubai's 84m.

If Poland's CPK were to be economically viable, it would need to have the capacity to compete with Frankfurt (60m) and Schiphol (63m). Central Poland currently has four airports,'Warsaw' Modlin (3m) plus Łódź and Radom which taken together added a mere 250,000 passengers last year. So growth would need to be spectacular if a CPK were to serve the 40m the government says will be using it when opened in 2027.

Poland national carrier LOT (seasoned travellers say the initials stand for 'Late Or Tomorrow') has got back on its feet financially, breaking into profit last year. But still, despite a new fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners and many new routes, LOT is still a tiddler compared to the big players on either short-haul routes (where the low-cost carriers such as Ryan Air and WizzAir dominate) or on the long-haul routes, where the super-connectors rule.

Before a super-hub airport starts making financial sense, there needs to be an airline able to put it to good use. Without illegal state aid, without subsidies burning holes in taxpayers' pockets.

There is the argument 'build it and they will come'. I remember when the Złote Tarasy shopping mall in Warsaw was being planned, many people said that Poles were too poor for it, that people passing through Śródmieście were only interested in catching a train, that the edge-of-town malls such as Klif, Panorama or Promenada were located in more logical places for retailing etc. And yet Złote Tarasy proved to be a successful venture.

The CPK project is not just about the airport. An important part of the plan (yet not in the overall budget for the project) is the high-speed railway line that will go through it en route from Warsaw to Łódź, where the line will split into one to Wrocław and one to Poznań. Great! All in favour of that.

And the motorway... the two lanes of the A2 between Konotopa junction west of Warsaw and Baranów are currently under getting close to full capacity, so building a CPK will mean the A2 will have to be widened from the junction with the A1 at Stryków all the way to Warsaw.

Just 16km from Baranów passes the Skierniewice-Łuków railway line, used by the Chinese container trains that run from Chongqing Logistics City and on to Łódź, Duisburg and East Ham. Could this strategic railfreight line somehow be tied in with the CPK? If so, how?

Poland's economy grew by 4.7% year-on-year (preliminary estimates) in the third quarter of 2017. There's plenty of upside;  financial institutions that carry out forecasts are busy revising their 2017 and 2018 estimates upwards. By 2027/28, when the CPK is said to become operational, the Polish economy will have grown by a quarter or a third on where it is today, even by very conservative estimates. Will Okęcie and Modlin together be big enough to serve Warsaw? Or will Warsaw find itself where London is today - seriously lacking airport capacity?

In theory, the elements are all there, but I'm sceptical that a great economically cogent plan can be drawn up to capitalise on this potential will be drawn up. Delivering the airport and the links can be done - grands projets on this scale are nothing extraordinary in themselves, but ones that don't end up as costly white elephants require careful modelling and management. 

This time last year:
The magic of superzoom

This time five years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad

This time seven years ago:
Dream highway

This time eight years ago:
The Days are Marching

This time ten years ago:
First snow, 2007
[not even had first frost yet this year!]