Public transport improvements

The smartphone is revolutionising public transport like no other technology. The recently introduced Koleje Mazowieckie app (below) is a huge leap forward; I can now buy my train ticket while walking to the station. No longer must I buy it on my laptop and send it to my phone. Or - as in older days - use the station ticket machine or booking office. Or buy ticket from the conductor and pay a surcharge for not having bought it at the station. Not only does mobile ticket purchase save time, it give me great flexibility. I buy my ticket once I know for definite which train I will catch (especially on return journeys from town). 

How it used to be: go to station, queue up in booking office, buy physical ticket. Payment in cash, later card.

Then along came the IT Revolution -

Stage 1: buy ticket online via desktop computer, print out ticket physically. 

Stage 2: buy ticket online via my desktop or laptop, and upload ticket digitally to my phone

Stage 3: buy ticket directly on my phone. Showing a piece of paper to the ticket inspector? Obciach, Panie!

[Stage X: think about buying ticket, think about payment, make the transaction happen telepathically. Ticket inspector looks at you and knows you've thought about - and paid for - your ticket.]

Since its launch last month, appeared a new iteration of the app with improved functionality has already appeared - no longer do I need to separately open my banking app to confirm payment - the Koleje Mazowieckie app will open it for me automatically. I just need to tap in the PIN once, and all is done.

Further improvements are on the way. Next month will see the launch of PKP InterCity's Pekapka app, giving the same flexibility for long-distance trains. It will also roll in the Wars app, which allows you to pre-purchase your in-train meal. (I notice you can't buy beer using this at present.)

Improvements are not only happening on the railways...

Son Eddie introduced me to Realbus.pl, a website (not yet an app) that allows you to see all of Warsaw's buses and trams in real time. Not quite perfect yet, but a huge advance, especially if your local bus timetable bears no resemblance to reality because of road works, detours or heavy traffic. Now, as I near W-wa Jeziorki station by train, I can check on Realbus.pl whether there's an eastbound 737 or 715 approaching ulica Karczunkowska (below: image from laptop - works as well on a phone).

Yes - it's running four minutes late. My train's on time. I'll catch the bus. Great!

More good bus news. FINALLY, after ten years of promises from Warsaw transport bosses, ulica Puławska finally gets a bus lane. Like a knife through butter, a 709 bus can now get me from Karczunkowska to Metro Wilanowska in 23 minutes in the morning rush hour, and from Metro Wilanowska to Karczunkowska in 23 minutes in the evening rush hour. 

If you're a motorist driving your sorry-arse one-per-SUV into town along Puławska and now moan about how much longer it takes you - all I can say is HA HA HA HA, wozidupku! Take public transport!

Final improvement (and this is only the for the select few) - having reached 65 (is that right? It doesn't feel right...) I am now eligible for a Roczny Bilet Seniora (annual senior's ticket). It costs me all of 50 zł (£9.14) for 365 days' of travel on Warsaw's Zone 1 and 2 - buses, trams, metro, SKM trains and - most importantly - Koleje Mazowieckie trains. It is 20 times cheaper than four quarterly season tickets on my old Karta Warszawiaka. Which was cheap when used daily, but when the post-pandemic WFH model means irregular trips to the office, it's not so good. Anyway, having bought a Roczny Bilet Seniora means I can get all the way to Zalesie Górne on the edge of Zone 2 for free, so I only need to buy my over-60 discount ticket from Zalesie to Chynów (30% off) for 5.72zł. So getting into the centre of Warsaw and back costs me just 11.44zł (£2.09). For a round trip of 88km. Żyć i nie umierać! (to live and not to die!)

Car ownership is not for me. Help save the planet!

This time last year:
Sublime autumn, Jeziorki

This time three years ago:
New track from Chynów to Warka

This time four years ago:

The possibilities of a quantum universe

This time five years ago:
More about sleep

This time 10 years ago:
On behalf of the workshy community

This time 11 years ago:
Classic truck cavalcade

This time 12 years ago
Narrow back-roads clogged with commuters

This time 13 years ago:
Autumn gold, Łazienkowski Park

This time 15 years ago:
Of bishops and bands

The spreading city - a vicious circle

I've not been to Nowa Iwiczna for several months; most of my rambles south of Jeziorki have been around the S7 extension roadworks west of the railway line. From the border of Warsaw, south of W-wa Jeziorki station, I take the footpath following the railway to its east (below) - this was once the path of the siding into the runs parallel to the rampa na kruszywa (aggregate transshipment ramp). 

Below: crossing the border (ulica Graniczna) between Mysiadło and Nowa Iwiczna, I notice that the path has widened and hardened for vehicular access. Soon I see why - a development of ten homes, two terraces of five houses on ul. Torowa (lit. 'track street'). Any space that a developer can squeeze in more housing - even if it's right by the railway line (you can make out the electricity gantries beyond the trees to the left). The row of houses to the left are less than 50m from the coal train line - which residents of Osiedle Etap by W-wa Jeziorki station complain bitterly above despite being twice as far away.

Below: the same thing is happening around the corner on newly-built ul. Turystyczna (lit. 'touristic street'), also in Nowa Iwiczna. Here, the houses are less than 30m away from the line, although there are no frequent passenger trains using the line here - only the long, heavy and loud coal trains. Photo taken from the pedestrian-only level crossing (bicycles can cross too - but you'd be hard pressed to get a motorbike past the barriers).

From this development to Nowa Iwiczna station is an eight-minute walk via that crossing. But to drive to the station is a journey of at least 2.6km, entailing two level crossings. I suspect walking makes sense to all but the laziest polluter-commuter. An alternative to taking the train is driving to town, along ul. Puławska, notorious for its traffic jams. Below: the section of ul. Puławska from ul. Energetyczna to ul. Okulickiego in Piaseczno is being widened to three lanes each way; a bottleneck bunging up the road. I can only hope that the long-(like ten years or more) delayed bus lanes for Puławska will finally appear. No excuse - especially now that the S2 tunnel has opened.

We know how all road-widening ends; "It's so much easier to drive to town!" More people do so, leading quickly to more congestion and calls for further road-widening. Meanwhile, as seen in the photos above, more and more development, more housing, more people, are moving out into Warsaw's suburbs. I can only hope that the growth of working from home will reduce numbers of people needing to make the daily trip to town, and once the pandemic has eased people will feel more comfortable using public transport and ditch the car.

For my Polish readers, this carbon-footprint calculator, courtesy of BNP Paribas, is worth looking at, in case you feel you're doing your bit to save the climate. It's sobering.

[Postscript, 9 January 2022: at the northern end of ul. Główna, Bobrowiec, less than 5km from Nowa Iwiczna, I see another development arising out of the fields. Sprayed on the chipboard surrounding the building site are the words: Jebać szeregowce - "Fuck terraced houses".]

[Postscript, 12 January 2022: fellow Warsaw blogger Student SGH sent me this wonderful photo from Nowa Iwiczna - the promise clashes with the reality. On a new house, a large banner proclaiming 'I wouldn't buy this house a second time'. Caveat emptor.

This time last year:
New sewers, new estate

This time two years ago:

The ultra-rich - deserving, or not

This time six years ago:
Globalisation and its part in PiS's return to power

This time seven years ago:
UK overtakes France as the world's fifth-largest economy

This time 11 years ago:
Wetlands winter meltdown

This time 12 years ago:
Winter's walk to work

This time 13 years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki North

Frustration for the local wozidupek* community

Sunday morning - I am checking Skyscraper City for the latest news of local infrastructure developments. The level crossing on ulica Baletowa (modernised just over four years ago) is being closed for a remont. This sign appeared on ul. Puławska. Traffic is being rerouted along ul. Karczunkowska and over the viaduct. This is a three-kilometre detour.

"We gave you fair warn". Several signs along the road right up to the crossing (which was closed on and off for over a year between May 2016 and August 2017 as part of the modernisation of the Warsaw-Radom line).

 Sunday afternoon, the crossing is still open - how many drivers noticed the sign?

Now it's closed. Diggers have dug right across the roadway, parallel to the rails; I suspect that drainage is being improved as flooding has occurred several times on the junction between ul Hołubcowa (the unasphalted track coming off ul. Baletowa. 

Motorists will try it on. Despite the signage, every now and then some doubting Tomasz will check whether the crossing really is closed, and will drive 500m from the junction at ul. Kórnicka as far as the railway and drive 500m back having ascertained that it is closed. 

* Wozidupek - short-distance, one-per-car commuter, who is too important for public transport. A major contributor to global warming.

This time last year:
Small local milestones, Chynów station

This time two years ago:

Brexit: what next?

This time four years ago:
Kick out against change - or accept it?

This time six years ago:
Warwick University alumni meet in Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Pluses and minuses of PKP InterCity

This time eight years ago:
When transportation breaks down

This time 13 years ago:
Full moon closest to Earth

Another rail bridge over Puławska for renewal

If you're going to Piaseczno by road, be sure to arm yourself with patience. This spring and summer (and most likely autumn too), ul. Puławska, notoriously jammed at the best of times, has become even more clogged up where the coal train line goes over the road. A week ago, demolition of the railway viaduct that carries coal trains from the sidings at W-wa Okęcie to the Siekierki power station via Konstancin-Jeziorna began. The purpose is to widen this choke-point, where Puławska narrows from three lanes to two. By rebuilding the bridge with a narrower central pillar, three lanes of traffic can pass under in each direction.

Below: looking north - the railway bridge has been dismantled entirely. Beyond it, a smaller structure that used to carry pipes across Puławska. It too will go, but won't be replaced.

Below: looking south: both spans of the railway bridge are down, but the offending central pillar remains; it won't be here much longer!

Below: to the west of Puławska there's a two-hectare patch of waste ground used only for dumping domestic rubbish. From here a view looking east under the bridge that used to carry pipes across the road (long since removed). Note the heaps of ballast removed from the railway track.

Below: view along the railway line looking towards the chasm left by the missing bridge. You can see one of the diggers in the distance. No chance of being hit from behind by a train! Siekierki has been well-stocked with coal; in the past weeks I could hear far more coal trains rumbling through the night than is usual; there's enough for summer months, but will the new bridge be ready for the winter?

I hope once the new bridge is up and Puławska's widened it will be time for a bus lane for the road - all the way from Piaseczno to Wilanowska.

Bonus shots - now and then; May 2019, May 2007; looking along ul. Karczunkowska towards W-wa Jeziorki and the railway line. How much change; new bus shelter, tennis school, garden centre, pedestrian crossing - but above all, the viaduct (another 'opening date' - end of May - will come and go). On the horizon of the 2012 photo, the radio mast of the old air traffic control radar base.

The old bus stop used to welcome the 319 (to PKP Jeziorki) and the 715 (to P+R Al. Krakowska). The 319 has been replaced by the 209 (which goes to Ursynów rather than Wilanowska); night buses no longer call at Jeziorki.

This time six years ago:
Thoughts about life occasioned by the birth of kittens

This time seven years ago:
Waiting for the footbridge on Puławska

This time eight years ago:
Lost in the wonder of it all

This time nine years ago:
Bicycle review

This time ten years ago:
A Celebration of the Garden

Thanks for the memory - morning flashback

Across Puławska, beyond the giant Selgros cash and carry, I espied a quartet of trucks. Awaiting unloading? Don't know. They there stood gleaming in the morning sunshine, and released within me a flashback to childhood - it came there instantly - a diecast Matchbox toy truck that I had in the mid-1960s, an American tractor-and-double-trailer combo. Long gone, the last part left was the four-wheel bogie linking the two trailers (I believe the children still played with that in the mid-1990s).

Right now there are two of these on eBay, mint and boxed; one for $127 (in Australia) and one for $250 (in the US), plus postage. I have no desire to actually spend such money on old toys, mainly because I know that owning one will not bring back the precise qualia of experience back in the same way as merely thinking about it, savouring the memory.

This time three years ago:
In which I learn to speak

This time four years ago:
Sunshine and snow, Łazienki Park

This time five years ago:
Shopping habits in the wake of Lidl's opening 

This time six years ago:
In vino veritas

This time seven years ago:
Are we getting more intelligent?

This time eight years ago:
Lenten recipe No. 6

This time nine years ago:
Coal trains, Konstancin-Jeziorna

This time ten years ago:
Jeziorki from the air

Metro rail-link bridge over Puławska: jams ahead

News is that ulica Puławska – that inescapable, unavoidable road into central Warsaw from the south – choked up solid as it is, will get worse. The bridge taking the single track linking Warsaw's Metro to the outside rail network is due for a major remont. Built in 1984 (11 years before the Metro opened!) the line links the Metro depot in Kabaty with the railway sidings at W-wa Okęcie. The bridge, spanning eight lanes of traffic (three plus three and two slip lanes) is in poor condition.

Below: from left to right – the acoustic screen of the S2 expressway; the S2 as it reaches its double-hairpin junction (where the traffic lights are); in the distance the work is under way to extend the S2 under the blocks of Ursynów, and the bridge, spanning Puławska.

Below: the bridge was built with walkways on either side. These have been closed off to pedestrians (indeed in the photo above, you can see a chap vaulting over the barrier). While there are steps at the other end of the bridge, there is no access on this side. The railway line itself is extremely rarely used; these days major movements of Metro rolling-stock are done by road (sadly). The only traffic I've seen on this line has been maintenance draisines, maintaining the track for the sake of keeping it maintained. Question – will the bridge continue to provide pedestrian access after the remont?

Further east, where the Metro rail link approaches the main Warsaw-Radom line, and the parallel coal train line. Below: in the foreground, the Metro line curves north, while in the background a bit of a rarity – a former East German loco developed from the Soviet-built M62 (in Poland known as the ST44). Post-unification, the Germans called this class of diesel freight locos BR232; this one is in the livery of CargoUnit, a rolling-stock rental firm, and is heading a rake of empty coal wagons back to Okęcie sidings from Siekierki power station.

Below: the Metro rail link, having crossed Puławska and skirted around the south-western outskirts of Ursynów, cuts through the edge of the Las Kabacki forest before reaching the Metro depot. This is a popular spot for recreation.

Below: a mountain for bikes – Bike Park Kazoora, one of Ursynów's two artificial hills made from builders' spoil from when the blokowiska were being built.

Below: the S2, meanwhile, heads east towards the Vistula (work on the new bridge is continuing on both banks); to get there, the S2 must dive under Ursynów – and indeed, under the Metro. Cut and cover by ul. Płaskowickiej, looking east.

Back by bus to W-wa Okęcie, I walk back along the Metro rail-link from where it starts. The buffers (below) are the symbolic end of the line; the link itself to the rest of the railway network runs to the right of the photo.

Just before I reach the S2 by Węzeł Warszawa Południe, I see a rare sight – a four-engined plane coming into land – an Airbus A340-300. Owned by Maltese airline Hi Fly (registration 9H-FOX), it is currently on lease to LOT Polish Airlines, and has been recently flying the Warsaw-Toronto route. No livery – just plain white. LOT is experiencing difficulty at present, with a pilots' strike and maintenance issues. Wet-leasing planes from other airlines is a stop-gap remedy for the moment.

Below: a LOT Boeing 787 Dreamliner crosses the S79 on final approach to Okęcie.

Back at W-wa Dawidy, I catch a rake of aviation fuel cisterns heading up the coal-train line towards the airport. No longer are the cisterns taken all the way into the fuel depot by rail – a new oil terminal has been built alongside the main railway line (south of the Poleczki viaduct); the fuel is pumped via an underground pipeline to the airport a kilometre away. The pipeline does away with a three-kilometre-long railway spur from the main line to the airport's fuel terminal.

Hauled by a NEWAG-refurbished SM42 (now known as a 6Dg) in Lotos livery, the train has just passed three signs warning the driver that the train will be passing points that lead onto an electrified section.

Below: a full load of biomass for co-firing with coal at Siekierki, on its way to Okęcie sidings, hauled by an ET22 loco through W-wa Dawidy station.

It is quarter past five and still light; by tomorrow the clocks go back and the sun sets an hour earlier – 16:14. The hammer of darkness is about to come down once more.

This time last year:
We are what we read, what we watch, what we listen to

This time five years ago:
Extraordinarily warm autumn

This time six years ago:
On behalf of the work-shy community

This time seven years ago:
Classic truck cavalcade

This time eight years ago
Suburban back-roads clogged with commuters

This time nine years ago:
Autumn gold, Łazienkowski Park

This time ten years ago:
Quintessential autumnal Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
Google Earth updates its map of Jeziorki

Local update at the start of the last week of Lent

A lovely warm day, with temperatures into double digits - the best way to clear snow, with the sun's rays rather than rain. A long walk (12,000 paces today), and time for a local update. It looks like ul. Karczunkowska will have a new bus stop, between the new Totalbud building and the state security-printers, PWPW. The new bus stop will be 450m from the one on the corner of Puławska and 400m from Trombity. This makes sense. Too many PWPW employees drive in by car, parking on verges, pavements even on street corners. Take away an excuse to use the car, and conditions will be better.

Though work should have started on 12 March, it hasn't really - will the new bus stop be ready by 30 April? And will it be called Pozytywki (50m from corner of Karczunkowska and ul. Pozytywki) or PWPW?

Spring is here, astronomical and meteorologic; I spot my first toad, making its way across Pozytywki towards the pond, now ice-free.

A look from the (unnamed because it's meant to be temporary) road linking ul. Gogolińska and Karczunkowska round the side of Biedronka. A nice view of the viaduct as it begins to take shape.

Meanwhile ul. Trombity is still being dug up for the water mains, so Monday-Friday during work hours, there's no getting through.


Coming soon - a Lenten review of the late Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

This time last year:
"Jeziorki bogged down in railway mud"
Guys - NOTHING. HAS. CHANGED.

This time two years ago:
Ideas, and how they take hold

This time three years ago:
Russian eyes peering down on Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
The fate of urban wetlands?

Kolej grójecka by Bogdan Pokropiński

I could not believe my eyes when I was perusing the used magazine stall on W-wa Śródmieście the other day - a mint copy of Bogdan Pokropiński's reference work, Kolej grójecka ('Grójec railway', WKŁ, 2002). This is the definitive book about the narrow-gauge railway line that once linked Warsaw to Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą via Mogielnica, Grójec, Tarczyn and Piaseczno, (which I've written about here).

For 30zł (there was receipt in the back of the book indicating an original purchase price of 63zł), I picked up a fascinating work full of photos (all b&w with just two colour plates), maps, diagrams, timetables and masses of history.

The book is a treasure trove of minutiae that will delight any Polish-reading anorak. I've learned many new facts about the line:

• Warszawa Południowy, the narrow-gauge terminal which stood on the site of the present-day Metro Wilanowska transport hub, used to be called (W-wa) Szopy, until 1943. Now, Szopy (which means 'stables' or 'sheds') is the name of parts of Ksawery and Stegny north of al. Wilanowska between Puławska to the west and al. Sikorskiego to the east. Until very recently, still an area where people lived in shacks rather than proper houses.

• The line originally ran from Pl. Unii Lubelskiej (then Pl. Keksholmski) to Piaseczno, opening in 1898. This being the Russian Empire at the time, Puławska, along which the railway ran, was called ul. Nowoaleksandryjska, as the Russians had renamed Puławy Nowa Aleksandria.Under German occupation in WW1, Puławska was renamed again Feldherrallee.

• Jasieniec used to be the southern terminal of the line between 1914 and 1915, when the line was extended by the Russian military from Grójec to Mogielnica. Under German occupation, passenger traffic was introduced onto the entire line (Warsaw-Mogielnica) after the Germans rebuilt it (the Russians destroyed everything as they fled in 1915).

• The line was further extended to Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą in 1924. This was the 'golden age' of the Grójec railway. In 1937, you could board the train at Warszawa Szopy at 07:34 and be at Nowe Miasto at 10:30, calling at Grójec (08:56) and Mogielnica (09:51) along the way. (You can still trace the line on Google Earth if you check Layers->More->Transportation->Rail in the sidebar.)

• As well as narrow-gauge steam engines, the line was served by diesel railcars before WW2, after initial proposals to electrify (!) the line were rejected. Several different types were in use to 1986, all but the very first (which served between 1924 and 1934) were Polish designed. After 1986, the 1,000mm-gauge line was equipped with Romanian built diesel locos, coaches and railcars.

• There used to be a 4.5km branch line off the main Nowe Miasto-Piaseczno section that ran from Grójec to Jasieniec. It was closed to traffic in 1966 and the tracks were lifted in February 1970. The trained eye can easily spot stretches of the track bed in the fields between the south-eastern corner of Grójec, Krobów and Jasieniec.

• The line probably would have been closed much earlier than was the case had it not been for the intervention of the Polish military. With the opening of a jet-fighter training base at Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą in 1954, a spur was built from the line to the airfield, and a Ministry of Defence siding built at Piaseczno for transferring aviation fuel into cisterns to be taken down to Nowe Miasto.

As my father told me over the summer, this railway line played an important in his family's survival through the German occupation of Warsaw after his father died. His mother, who hailed from Mogielnica originally, would travel out by train to buy meat from local farmers; she'd sell half and feed herself and her three boys with the other half.

Bogdan Pokropiński's book is essential reference for anyone interested in Warsaw's railway history. It's available online from the WKŁ website for 45zł. And if you're interested in the line, it's worth popping down next summer for a weekend trip from Piaseczno to Tarczyn and back - or to cycle alongside the track on a bike, when you're sure there's no train due.

This time two years ago:
PIS, thinking wishfully about the village

This time four years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time six years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time seven years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Spirit of place - anomalous familiarity moments 

Recent Jeziorki (and Warsaw) roundup

Lots going on at Jeziorki right now, intensive activity around the station. Below: a new temporary level crossing is being prepared, passengers to town now have to walk a different way to get to the 'up' platform. Workers are busy up and down the line, working on the electricity, signalling and the water and sewers.

Below: corner of Nawłocka and Karczunkowska looking like a war zone with heavy plant digging trenches to re-lay the sewers away from the line of the new viaduct.

The story in local news service, Haloursynów.pl suggests that the viaduct will be ready in 12 months' time. Let me tell you this. Not a chance. Not even in 24 months. Watch this blog. Long-term readers will remember the building of the viaducts over the S2 on ul. Poloneza (now re-named Kujawiaka) and ul. Hołubcowa. It took three years (2009-2012) to build them, plus another year to be finally opened (you know, paperwork, that sort of thing).

Meanwhile on Puławska, I noticed that the new Volvo building has been beautifully illuminated, below.

In town, a bit of sunlight shining through the heavy clouds lights up socialist-realist architecture on ul. Twarda and Emilii Plater, below.

Below: turning south, the Palace of Culture in the autumnal sun.

Below: view of south-west Warsaw from the 32nd floor of Rondo 1, looking along al. Jana Pawła II. A rain cloud passes over south Mazovia.

Well before daybreak, Thursday morning, waiting for the 05:20 train to Kraków at W-wa Zachodnia, a far more civilised place than in pre-remont days when it was my pick for Poland's worst railway station.

Bonus pic, from out of town: Chynów station. I have my eyes on a działka around here!

This time last year:
Autumn in Jeziorki
[far nicer than today - it rained and it rained]

This time two years ago:
A driving ban for developers and architects

This time three years ago:
Do you keep coming back, or do you seek the new?

This time four years ago:
In praise of Retro design

This time five years ago:
First snowfall in Warsaw 

This time six years ago:
Of cycles, economic and human 

This time seven years ago:
Why didn't I read this before? Grapes of Wrath

This time eight years ago:
Małopolska from the train

This time nine years ago:
Grading ul. Poloneza

Big news for Jeziorki

A big thank you to my regular readers, Bartek, Dr Marcin and Bob, who, in that order, alerted me to the big story that broke this week: a large estate, for up to 8,000 people, is being planned for the land where the old rampa na kruszywa used to be. Below: these fields, initially bought up by Spanish developer Sando Inmobiliera, now belong to the Polish state treasury. As part of the social housing programme, the land has been earmarked for blocks of flats, rather than single-family units. View looking south-west.

Below: another view, looking south-east. Now, this is going to be a huge project. The website of BGK Nieruchomości (the property arm of state-owned bank BGK), says the site's size is 148,260 square metres - up to those trees along the far horizon.

Below: I plot that onto a local satellite map using Google Earth Pro, which lets you measure area as well as distance (and now it's free!). I marked a 148,260 m2 polygon on it, outlined in red. Now, to measure out that area, the golf course will have to go, along with the scrap-metal yard. Click to enlarge.

Last week, BGK Nieruchomości announced an architectural competition to find the best project. The task: to fit 8,000 people into 148,260m2 (works out at 18m2 per person, which suggests blocks several stories high) and to do so in a sustainable, low impact way. Below: from Warsaw city hall's official website showing plots and ownership. Grey = private, yellow = city, pink = state treasury. The guidelines for the competition state that car space provision should be no more than one for every two flats. The idea is that everything that's needed for bringing up young families is to be found within the boundaries marked in yellow, the plot itself marked with a red border.

The terms of the competition (click on link above) give the clearest indication of what the authorities are aiming for. Low-cost social housing, for young families as well as old people, using public transport to get to work, with nearby nurseries for small children.

It will be a crush to put 8,000 people into this space. That is more than the entire populations of poviat towns in Mazowsze such as Białobrzegi (pop. 7,056), Zwoleń (7,940) or Lipsko (5,678). Warsaw's longest block of flats, ul. Kijowska 11 (one building, one address, over half a kilometre long) is home to just 1,200 people. So this will be high-density housing. It will triple the population of Jeziorki Południowe, placing a huge burden on public transport and on the roads, in particular on ul. Karczunkowska, which feeds into the already-choked ul. Puławska.

The architectural competition sets out that there should be a maximum of 138,000m2 of housing space (on a 148,000m2 plot, remember, of which only 35% can be used for housing), with 45% of the flats being one-bedroom, 40% two-bedroom and the remaining 15% three-bedroom. And the buildings should average 20m in height (seven floors), being lower when built adjacent to agricultural land.

Quick calculation then. One third of 148,000 is 50,000m2. To get 138,000m2 of housing on to that footprint means an average of three floors. One car per five (on average) inhabitants still means 1,600 cars; end-to-end with a metre between each one, this is the equivalent of a traffic jam eight kilometres long, should everyone choose to drive out onto Karczunkowska at the same time. This (and not the number of inhabitants) is unsustainable.

Entries must be submitted by the end of November. It will be interesting to see the results - they will have a huge impact on the neighbourhood.

This time last year:
Autumn in Warsaw

This time two years ago:
Inside the Norblin factory 

This time four years ago:
Sadness at the death of Tadeusz Mazowiecki

This time six years ago:
More hipster mounts (Warsaw fixieism)

This time seven years ago:
Welcome to Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Just like the old days