Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki says he has met with the board of state rail operator PKP Intercity to “demand a significant reduction” in ticket prices and to offer the firm further financial support.
On 11 January, PKP raised prices on its ExpressIntercity (EIC) and Express InterCity Premium (EIP) services that run between large Polish cities by an average of 17-18%. Its other services saw increases of 10-12%, notes financial news service Money.pl.
Zmieniły się ceny biletów PKP Intercity. Oto przykłady nowych stawek https://t.co/cKQQgGnoLf pic.twitter.com/CLXnwN1ksU
— Money.pl (@Money_pl) January 11, 2023
The firm blamed “growing operating costs, resulting primarily from higher electricity prices”. Inflation in Poland has been at a 25-year-high of over 16% since the middle of last year, with energy prices seeing particularly large rises.
PKP noted that this was its first systematic increase in ticket prices since 2014. Since then, it wrote, traction energy prices have increased by 65% per passenger and the costs of the renovation of rolling stock by over 140% per passenger.
However, its decision prompted widespread public anger, with many arguing that for many journeys it would now be both cheaper and quicker to travel by car.
Rzadko są punktualni, ale za to są najdrożsi. Oto nowe ceny w PKP. 200 złotych za podróż z Warszawy do Krakowa. Skrin sprzed chwili ze strony PKP. pic.twitter.com/UnS2F991wV
— Szymon Jadczak (@SzJadczak) January 11, 2023
In response, the government’s spokesman, Piotr Müller, announced on 19 January that “we expect PKP to take measures that would…reduce ticket prices”. He noted that last year the government introduced a subsidy programme for rail operators to mitigate the impact of higher electricity prices.
Today, Morawiecki announced that he met last week with infrastructure minister Andrzej Adamczyk and the management board of PKP Intercity.
“I communicated that I am demanding a significant reduction [in prices], and preferably a return to the previous prices,” he said, quoted by RMF24.
This would ensure that “inflation is as stifled and frozen as possible, so as not to send these additional inflation impulses”. But it would mean “above all that Poles, citizens, can travel comfortably and at the lowest possible cost”.
“We are also working to transfer additional funds from the state budget to PKP to compensate for the increase in electricity prices, because this is a nightmare that is plaguing all EU countries,” added Morawiecki, in quotes carried by Onet. He said that he hoped this would happen within two weeks.
Last year saw a record number of passengers use PKP’s services, making almost 60 million journeys with the operator, surpassing the previous pre-pandemic peak.
Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
