A new bus station hailed by the media as the “most beautiful in Poland” has opened in the city of Lublin following three years of construction and a 340 million zloty (€78 million) investment.
“This is not just a transfer point, it is a symbol of progress, modernity and care for the environment,” said the marshal of the Lublin province, Jarosław Stawiarski, at the station’s opening earlier this month.
“This is not a station fit for 2024, it is a station fit for 2050,” added deputy minister of funds and regional policy Jan Szyszko, quoted by local newspaper Dziennik Wschodni.
lublin kiedy ma najpiękniejszy dworzec w polsce pic.twitter.com/ZzfcUB2Ii3
— 🌙🌿🐏 — pythia !! (@raskolya) December 5, 2023
The new facility is located alongside the city’s main train station and will act as a hub for municipal, regional and long-distance transport. The first bus that left was heading for Kharkiv in Ukraine.
The building’s most characteristic features are its cup-like pillars that some have likened to those in Singapore’s famous Gardens by the Bay. It also has a living “green wall” made up of almost 27,000 plants.
To reduce the facility’s environmental impact, its roof hosts solar panels and a rainwater recovery system while on the ground there are “anti-smog” paving stones that can absorb pollutants from the air.
The building’s walls are made from glass with a low heat transfer coefficient and ground source heat pumps are used for heating, reports the Murator Plus construction news website.
It also features ticket counters with lowered windows to make them accessible for wheelchair users and induction loops for those with hearing loss. The main facility is spread over one level without stairs or barriers to make it more accessible for disabled people.
Last year, before opening, the building was named as best ecological project at Poland’s annual Green Building Awards. In 2019, while still in the concept stage, it was shortlisted for the World Building of the Year award.
Of the 340 million zloty construction costs, almost two thirds came from EU funds. The new facility is intended to replace the former bus station, built in the 1970s, that is located elsewhere in the city on Aleja Tysiąclecia.
Lublin’s former bus station (Panek/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0)
However, newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza notes that not all carriers are immediately moving to the new facility. Some say they were given too little time to prepare new timetables. Others also criticise the new location, saying it means buses have to travel through traffic-filled streets, which can add 15-20 minutes to travel times.
For the time being, the city has launched a special bus line connecting the old and new stations. It is expected that all carriers will move to the new facility by the end of the second quarter of this year.
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Main image credit: Miasto Lublin
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.
