The Polish government has announced that preparatory work is underway for 1,000 kilometres of railway lines that will be built as part of a major infrastructure project near Warsaw, whose centrepiece will be a new “mega-airport”.
The Solidarity Transport Hub (CPK) will also feature railway interchanges and road connections. Construction is expected to begin in 2023, with an official opening ceremony pencilled in for 2027.
“It may appear as though, if the excavators are not driving around, nothing is happening,” deputy minister for infrastructure Marcin Horała told Polskie Radio. But technical studies and preparatory work for the railway lines are currently underway, he explained.
Aviation market forecasts and plans for the construction of a railway tunnel under the nearby city of Łódź are also being drawn up, said the official. Additionally, the government is currently conducting an environmental audit, which needs to run through all seasons of the year.
The CPK project includes plans for the construction of around 1,800 kilometres of new railway lines in total along 12 routes, to be fully completed by 2034.
In June, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki signed an agreement with his Spanish counterpart to cooperate on the development of Poland’s high-speed rail system. Spain’s Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) high-speed railway is the largest such network in Europe.
The government argues that the CPK investment will provide a boost for business and travel in Central and Eastern Europe. However, the opposition has criticised the 10 billion zloty (€2.2 billion) project as an unnecessary expense given the existence of four airports in Warsaw’s vicinity.
The airport was forecast to initially serve 45 million passengers a year, which would put it in a similar league to London Gatwick (which had 46.5 million passengers in 2019). The aim is to eventually expand to 100 million a year, which, on pre-pandemic figures, would make it the second busiest airport in the world alongside Beijing and behind only Atlanta.
Some residents living in three villages around where the airport will be based have, however, opposed the project, saying that they will lose their homes and farms. This month, 200 residents held a protest, using tractors to block a road running through the area.
Around 200 residents of three villages at the site where the Polish government wants to build a new "mega-airport" protested against the plan today, saying they will lose their homes and farms
They used 60 tractors to block a road running through the area https://t.co/i6ef9hxj9A
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 19, 2021
Main image credit: CPK press materials
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
