The city of Kraków has announced plans to build a “premetro” – a light railway including rapid transit segments through a combination of tunnels and above-ground sections – linking its western and eastern districts through the historic city centre.
The line will cost less than half the amount of a full-scale metro system – an idea residents backed by a narrow majority in a previous referendum – and is expected to open in 2033.
Kraków’s authorities say that, once complete, the line will have 32 stations, spaced an average of 670 metres apart, linking the Wzgórza Krzesławickie district in the northeast of the city with Bronowice in the northwest, running through the Nowa Huta district, the main railway station and the city centre.
The total length of the line will be almost 22 kilometres, of which 6.6 kilometres will be in two tunnels under the city centre and in Bronowice, as well as 1.4 kilometres along an overpass. An estimated 14,000 passengers will be carried during rush hour.
The premetro is to be built in three stages. The first, central section, is expected to open in 2033, followed by extensions in the eastern and western suburbs to be completed in 2037.
Kraków’s mayor, Jacek Majchrowski, said that the city now needs to conduct financial analyses and consider outside funding. The lowest estimate for the cost of the investment is 5.8 billion zloty (€1.3 billion). That is equivalent to the city’s annual budget, although less than half the amount required to build a metro, he noted.
Asked whether the news spelt the end of the city’s dreams of a metro system, Majchrowski said it was “the end of half the dreams”, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.
“The premetro will be part-metro, because much of it will run underground and the rest of it above,” he added. “Because in Kraków we have geological and conservation considerations, not to mention financial ones.”
“A traditional metro is not profitable and makes no sense,” Majchrowski wrote last month. “I always said that to build a normal metro, there have to be appropriate flows of people, and there are no such flows in Kraków.”
At a referendum in 2015, just over 55% of Kraków’s residents who voted backed the idea of building a metro in the city, with almost 45% against.
Andrzej Kulig, the city’s deputy mayor, explained that the feasibility study had taken so long to complete because of additional analyses from Kraków universities and consultations with monument preservation authorities in the historic city, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.
“All this gives us the sense that the consecutive stages of work on the premetro will be based on reliable material,” Kulig added.
The idea of building a metro or premetro network was first raised in Kraków in the 1960s, when a conference on the subject was held. The city has increasingly struggled with traffic congestion in recent years, despite its extensive network of buses and trams and increasing bicycle usage.
Warsaw is home to Poland’s only metro system. Its first line was opened in 1995 and reached its full length in 2008. A second line was added in 2015, with a third line planned.
Main image credit: Krakow.pl
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
