Poland is embarking on one of the most ambitious railway infrastructure programmes in its history, with the Integrated Railway Network (ZSK) envisaged as the backbone of a transformed national transport system. The programme calls for around 4,700 km of new railway lines, including approximately 2,700 km built to high-speed standards, alongside the modernisation of a further 5,600 km of existing routes. Rather than focusing solely on connections between the country’s largest cities, the strategy aims to create a nationwide network linking major metropolitan areas with regional centres and smaller communities, while also strengthening passenger and freight connections with neighbouring countries and the wider European railway network. At the heart of this vision is a shift from planning individual railway projects to developing an integrated system designed around actual passenger and freight flows, regional development, economic growth and national resilience.
In an exclusive interview with our publication, Piotr Rachwalski, Board Member for Railway Investments at Centralny Port Komunikacyjny, Port Polska, discusses Poland’s railway transformation, the strategic thinking behind the ZSK and how the country sees the development of rail infrastructure shaping its future role in Europe.
Railway PRO: Port Polska’s Integrated Railway Network (ZSK) represents the most transformative rail investment in Poland’s history, with 4,700 km of new lines including 2,700 km to high-speed standard. What was the strategic rationale for prioritising rail as the backbone of this programme, and how does it align with Poland’s broader transport and economic policy?
I would start with the fact that the Integrated Railway Network, or ZSK, is really about transforming Poland’s transport system and filling a long-standing gap in Polish transport policy. We have had a very clear strategic vision for the road network since the 1990s, and over the last 30 years that vision has been implemented quite consistently.
In rail, by contrast, Poland has had a number of important programmes and initiatives aimed at developing railway infrastructure – including PKP PLK’s investment plans, the Kolej Plus programme, the PKP PLK station programme, the PKP SA railway station programme, as well as various concepts for developing high-speed rail in Poland.
All of these have addressed genuine infrastructure needs, but they have largely been developed within particular areas or implementation periods. We did not have one comprehensive answer to the question: what should Poland’s railway network look like in its target state, and how should all these individual investments fit together as one national system? ZSK is intended to provide that answer.
Rail is particularly important because of the way Poland is structured. We are a country with a polycentric settlement system, with several strong regional centres rather than one dominant metropolitan area. So we need a transport system that connects Warsaw with the regions, but equally importantly connects the regions with each other.
This is why I would not describe ZSK simply as a High-Speed Rail programme. Of course, around 2,700 kilometres of the new network will be built to high-speed standards, but the objective is much broader. It is about creating an integrated system in which long-distance, regional and freight services work together. The numbers are significant – around 4,700 kilometres of new lines and 5,600 kilometres of existing lines to be modernised – but the real value is in the network effect.
The programme is designed to connect not only the largest metropolitan areas, but also medium-sized cities and communities that today have limited or no access to long-distance rail. Through feeder connections, interchange hubs and modernisation of existing infrastructure, the objective is to improve accessibility across the country rather than simply connect the largest cities. This is an important part of addressing transport exclusion and supporting balanced regional development.
There is also a clear demand-side rationale. Poland carried 439 million rail passengers in 2025, which is a strong increase, but that is still only around 11 journeys per capita, compared with approximately 19.5 in the EU. So the market is growing, and there is substantial potential for further modal shift towards rail.
That supports several broader government objectives: improving mobility, reducing regional disparities, supporting economic growth and increasing the share of rail in passenger and freight transport. It also supports environmental objectives, because fast and reliable rail can provide a competitive alternative to road transport and part of domestic air travel.
And I would add one more dimension, which has become increasingly important: resilience and national security. The new mainlines are being planned as dual-use infrastructure, so the network has value not only for passengers and the economy but also for military mobility and national resilience.
The new airport is also an important part of this integrated approach. Its High-Speed Rail station will form part of the airport infrastructure, creating a genuinely multimodal hub in which long-distance rail, regional transport and air travel are connected within one system.
So, for me, the strategic rationale is straightforward: rail gives Poland the ability to connect its people, regions and economy in a way that is difficult to achieve through road infrastructure alone. ZSK takes that long-term view and creates a railway network that supports Poland’s economic, social, environmental and security objectives over the coming decades.
Railway PRO: The ZSK replaces the previous ten-axis model with 19 strategic corridors. From a railway planning perspective, what deficiencies in the existing network made this fundamental redesign necessary, and how will the new corridors better connect Poland’s major urban centres?
From a railway planning perspective, the fundamental problem was that the existing network had developed over many decades, but it was not designed as one coherent system for today’s Poland.
There are gaps in connectivity, particularly between some of the major regional centres, and there are also places where the existing infrastructure forces passengers onto indirect routes through Warsaw or another major node. In other words, having a railway line between two cities does not necessarily mean you have an efficient railway connection between them. Journey time, frequency, capacity and the ability to connect into the wider network are equally important.
The previous ten-axis, or “spoke”, concept approached the problem differently. It concentrated roughly 2,000 kilometres of new lines around a central point, with the network essentially designed to bring major cities towards the new airport.
The issue with that model was not that the individual spokes were necessarily bad railway projects. The problem was the network architecture. Poland’s travel patterns are much more complex than a system where most important journeys converge on one centre. People travel between Wrocław and Poznań, Poznań and Gdańsk, Kraków and Wrocław, Katowice and other regional centres – and businesses move goods between regions without needing to pass through Warsaw.
So the ZSK approach starts from the opposite direction: what connections does the country actually need, and what network gives us the greatest benefit?
That is why we moved to 19 strategic mainlines. They create a much more connected mesh rather than a set of spokes. They are designed to strengthen both north-south and east-west connectivity and to improve connections between the major metropolitan areas.
You can see this very clearly in the journey-time objectives. ZSK supports the strategic idea of “Poland in 100 minutes” – bringing major cities such as Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz within roughly 100 minutes of Warsaw, while also improving cross-country links such as Wrocław–Kraków and Poznań–Gdańsk.
Then there is the “Poland in 3 hours” objective: being able to travel across the country, for example Warsaw–Szczecin, Kraków–Gdańsk or Lublin–Wrocław, in around three hours.
That is a very different way of thinking about a railway network. You are not designing individual lines; you are designing journeys across the whole country.
And this is where the analysis behind ZSK is particularly important. We did not simply take the old ten spokes and redraw them as 19 lines. Around 8,000 kilometres of potential new railway corridors were analysed, eleven different network variants were assessed, and the Passenger Transport Model and Freight Transport Model were used to test demand and network effects. There were also 16 regional expert panels involving more than 600 experts, producing around 160 potential corridor concepts.
The result is a network of approximately 4,700 kilometres of new lines, of which about 1,000 kilometres are already under construction, in procurement or in advanced design. Importantly, the programme also includes around 5,600 kilometres of existing railway to be modernised. That combination is critical: you cannot get the full benefit from new lines if the connecting parts of the existing network remain slow or capacity-constrained.
The other important change is that ZSK is not only about the biggest cities. Twenty-seven small and medium-sized cities will gain railway access, and more than 120 interchange hubs are planned. The objective is for every county to have access to long-distance rail, either directly or through well-coordinated regional and bus connections.
There is a freight dimension as well. The new corridors are intended to improve the movement of goods between regions and internationally, with the programme targeting an increase in average commercial freight speed from around 34 km/h today to 56 km/h, as well as new intermodal terminals.
So, from a railway-planning point of view, the fundamental change is this: we are moving from planning railway lines as individual projects to planning the railway as a network.
The 19 corridors are not 19 isolated investments. They are the structural elements of a national system designed around actual passenger and freight flows, the polycentric geography of Poland, and the need for much stronger connections between its major urban and economic centres.
Railway PRO: With 2,700 km designed for speeds of 250 km/h or higher, how do you envision the operational model for Poland’s new high-speed network? Will these be dedicated passenger lines, and what is the expected impact on journey times between Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk and other key cities?
I would be careful about looking at the 2,700 kilometres simply as a collection of dedicated high-speed passenger lines. The intention is to build a high-performance railway network, where new high-speed infrastructure works together with upgraded existing lines.
That distinction is important operationally. The value of high-speed infrastructure comes from what it does to the whole timetable and the whole network – where you can run fast passenger services, where you can increase capacity, and where existing lines can then be used more effectively for regional and freight traffic.
So I see the future model as a layered network rather than a purely separate high-speed system. The new high-standard lines provide the fast backbone, while modernised existing lines continue to perform important regional and freight functions.
The “Y” line is a central part of this transformation. It will connect Warsaw, the new airport, Łódź, Poznań and Wrocław. The line is being designed for speeds of up to 350 km/h, with the fastest commercial services planned at up to 320 km/h. The first section between Warsaw, the new airport and Łódź is planned for operation in 2032, with completion of the full line planned by 2035.
For me, the important point is that we should not judge High-Speed Rail only by the maximum speed of a train. What matters to passengers is the end-to-end journey time, frequency, reliability and the number of useful destinations that can be reached without unnecessary detours.
The integration with the new airport is also fundamental. The high-speed station will form part of the airport infrastructure, making the airport accessible by rail from across the country and allowing passengers to move efficiently between long-distance rail and air services.
If we get that combination right, rail becomes genuinely competitive with the car and, on longer domestic journeys, with air. That is ultimately the operational purpose of the high-speed component of ZSK.
Railway PRO: The first phase includes approximately 1,000 km already under construction or at advanced planning stages, with completion targeted by 2035. Which rail corridors are being prioritised, and what criteria determined this sequencing?
The first point I would make is that 2035 is actually quite close in railway infrastructure terms. A major railway project can require five to ten years of preparation and documentation before construction starts, followed by several more years of construction. So the projects already in construction, procurement or advanced design are effectively the first building blocks of the future network.
The priority is therefore not simply based on which line can be built fastest. It is about creating the first pieces of a network that can immediately connect into the wider system.
Among the key projects are the “Y” high-speed corridor, the Polish section of Rail Baltica, Podłęże–Piekiełko and the Katowice–Ostrava connection. These projects have different functions, but together they demonstrate the logic of the first phase: connecting the largest markets, opening important international directions and removing strategic gaps in the network.
Importantly, this is no longer only a programme at the planning stage. Over the past year, we have moved decisively from preparation to implementation.
We have signed the contract for the Łódź High-Speed Rail tunnel, secured key location decisions for the Warsaw – Łódź line, and launched procurement procedures for multiple HSR sections, as well as for the station beneath the new airport. We have also begun archaeological works along the 120-kilometre Warsaw – Łódź section of the “Y” line.
At the same time, work on the Łódź HSR tunnel is already underway. The Retkinia launching chamber is a key engineering point where the tunnel boring machine is currently being assembled for the excavation of the several-kilometre tunnel under the city. Drilling is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027. This is tangible evidence that the programme has moved from planning into physical, on-site implementation.
The sequencing also reflects the fact that railway investments have to be looked at as part of a wider system. A new line is most valuable when it connects effectively with existing infrastructure or with another strategic investment, rather than operating as an isolated project.
So I would describe the sequencing as network-driven rather than project-driven. The objective is to establish the critical first corridors and then progressively build the connections around them, so that the overall system becomes more coherent with each stage of investment.
And that is ultimately what makes the 2035 horizon important. We are not waiting until 2035 to start building the ZSK network. The network is being built now, with the first major high-speed connection expected to be in service in 2032, and the investments already underway forming the foundation for the much larger system that follows.
Railway PRO: Port Polska sits within the broader TEN-T framework, with Poland positioned at the intersection of the Baltic-Adriatic, North Sea-Baltic, and East-Mediterranean corridors. How does the ZSK strengthen Poland’s role as a rail transit hub, and what cross-border connections are being planned with Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania?
Poland’s geographical position gives us a very strong starting point. We sit between the Baltic and the rest of continental Europe and at the intersection of several major TEN-T corridors. But geography alone does not make a country a rail transit hub. What matters is whether the national network has the capacity, quality and interoperability to handle international passenger and freight flows efficiently.
This is where ZSK has a very important European dimension. The network is not being designed simply as a domestic railway system with international connections added at the edges. The international dimension is being built into the network architecture from the beginning, with stronger north-south and east-west connections linking Poland into the wider European system.
Rail Baltica is obviously fundamental in the north-east. The Polish section will provide the link between the Polish network and Lithuania and the Baltic States, strengthening both passenger and freight connectivity towards the Baltic region.
Further south, the Katowice–Ostrava connection is particularly important because it creates a high-standard link between the Polish and Czech railway systems and connects into the wider Central European network. There is already a very concrete European dimension to this project: in 2025, the European Union allocated €18.3 million for the design documentation for the high-speed section between Katowice and the state border. This forms part of the wider Katowice–Ostrava–Brno–Vienna connection and the Baltic–Adriatic European transport corridor.
With Slovakia, the approach has to reflect the geography of the southern part of Poland. The objective is not to build new high-speed infrastructure everywhere simply for the sake of having new infrastructure. Where upgrading an existing route gives the better network result, that can be the more appropriate solution. The important thing is to create an effective cross-border corridor and integrate it with the wider ZSK network.
Germany is particularly important from both the passenger and freight perspective. On the passenger side, the western part of the ZSK network creates opportunities for stronger connections towards Germany and, ultimately, the wider Western European high-speed network. On the freight side, the objective is to provide more efficient routes for longer and heavier trains moving between Poland and Western European markets.
And this is where I think the concept of interoperability becomes particularly important. A cross-border railway corridor cannot be planned by looking only at the Polish side of the border. Infrastructure parameters, capacity, signalling, operating rules and ultimately the timetable have to work together. Otherwise, you can build an excellent railway on one side and still have a weak international connection.
So the objective is not simply to build four or five international links. It is to make sure that Poland’s railway network and the networks of our neighbours increasingly function as one European system.
That would strengthen Poland’s role considerably. Instead of being simply a country through which some European freight or passenger services happen to pass, Poland can become one of the key railway nodes connecting the Baltic, Western Europe, Central Europe and the eastern part of the continent. And that is exactly the kind of role our geography gives us the opportunity to play within TEN-T.
Railway PRO: The Baltic Sea ports (Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Świnoujście) are critical nodes in European freight corridors. How does the ZSK balance the competing demands of high-speed passenger services and growing freight capacity, particularly on routes serving the ports and the Ukrainian trade corridors?
This is one of the most important principles in the network design: passenger and freight rail should not be treated as competing for exactly the same infrastructure everywhere.
If you put very fast passenger trains and heavy freight trains onto the same heavily utilised section, you can quickly create a capacity problem. So the answer is to design the network intelligently – using new high-performance passenger routes where they make sense, while upgrading existing corridors and developing appropriate mixed-traffic routes for freight.
That is why the modernisation programme is just as important as the construction of new lines. The planned upgrades include higher axle loads, longer permissible freight trains and the removal of capacity bottlenecks.
The ports are a particularly good example. The ZSK identifies the Gdańsk–Gdynia complex as requiring strong rail freight connections capable of distributing cargo towards central, southern and eastern Poland and into international markets. The same applies to the Szczecin–Świnoujście complex, particularly as port capacity develops.
The programme also includes new intermodal terminals, designed to a common technical standard, which is important because a railway freight network is only as effective as its connections to terminals and the wider logistics system.
And then there is the eastern dimension. ZSK explicitly considers potential future connections towards Ukraine, including the Warsaw–Lublin–Rzeszów direction and the possibility of a Warsaw–Lublin–Zamość–Lviv–Kyiv corridor.
So the objective is not to choose between passenger and freight. It is to design enough capacity and the right type of infrastructure so that both can grow. That is ultimately what makes a railway network productive: fast passenger services where passengers need them, and reliable, high-capacity freight paths where the economy needs them.
Railway PRO: The programme’s estimated cost of EUR 143 billion to 2050 is substantial. What proportion is allocated specifically to rail infrastructure, and what is the financing model? How much is expected from EU instruments such as the Connecting Europe Facility, and what role will national budget or private capital play?
The Port Polska investments – the new airport and its associated High-Speed Rail – are financed through a structured national programme approved by the Polish government. The Multiannual Programme for 2024–2032 provides PLN 131.7 billion, with around PLN 42.7 billion allocated specifically for the airport and PLN 76.8 billion for High-Speed Rail infrastructure.
Funding comes primarily from the state budget, EU funds and dedicated financial instruments. Shareholder contributions and a partnership with Polish Airports as a minority investor will cover part of the airport costs, while the remainder is financed through debt instruments, with financial advisers coordinating closely with national and international institutions.
EU support is an important element of the railway component. To date, we have secured more than PLN 600 million in funding from the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility for railway projects, including grants for feasibility and design work on key sections of the High-Speed Rail network developed under the Port Polska programme.
A particularly important example came in 2025, when the European Union allocated €18.3 million specifically for the preparation of design documentation for the High-Speed Rail section connecting Katowice to the state border. This line forms part of the Katowice–Ostrava–Brno–Vienna connection and the Baltic–Adriatic European transport corridor.
In the coming years, we will continue to seek multi-billion-zloty EU funding for the “Y” line, particularly for the Warsaw–Łódź section. An additional CEF funding call is planned this year, in which we intend to apply for support for the construction of the Łódź High-Speed Rail tunnel.
This EU backing is important not only financially. It also confirms that the programme is strategically relevant at the European level.
This is one of the largest infrastructure programmes in Europe. It requires time, discipline and capital, and our approach is to ensure that the financing structure remains responsible and sustainable while allowing the programme to be delivered according to its long-term objectives.
Railway PRO: Looking at the European context, countries such as Spain, France and Italy have well-established high-speed networks, while others are still developing theirs. What aspects of the Port Polska rail programme could serve as a model for other Central and Eastern European countries seeking to modernise their rail infrastructure and integrate more fully into the European network?
I think the most interesting aspect of ZSK for other Central and Eastern European countries is not simply the scale of the investment. It is the way the network has been planned.
Countries with mature high-speed systems have accumulated decades of experience with individual corridors. Poland has an opportunity to learn from that experience while designing a much more integrated network from the outset.
The first lesson is to think in terms of a network rather than individual high-speed lines. A successful railway system is not just Warsaw–Wrocław or Warsaw–Kraków. It is the interaction between long-distance, regional and freight services and the connections between the major metropolitan areas.
The second lesson is to combine new construction with systematic modernisation of the existing network. You do not get the full benefit from high-speed lines if the rest of the system becomes the bottleneck.
The third is to plan nationally but think internationally. For a country in Central and Eastern Europe, the railway network cannot stop at the border. Connections to Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania and, potentially, Ukraine have to be considered as part of the network architecture from the beginning.
The fourth is to think about accessibility beyond the largest cities. High-Speed Rails should not be seen as an exclusive system for major metropolitan areas. Through feeder connections, modernised existing infrastructure and interchange hubs, the benefits of the national network can reach medium-sized cities and regions as well. This is important both for economic development and for reducing transport exclusion.
And finally, I think there is a methodological lesson. ZSK was developed through modelling, economic and spatial analysis, regional consultation and engagement with the freight, logistics and defence sectors. Different network variants were assessed before the recommended configuration was selected.
That is important because railway infrastructure lasts for generations. You are making decisions today that will shape transport patterns for 50 or even 100 years. So the planning process h grounded in robust demand forecasting, economic modelling and objective analysis.
If there is a broader lesson for the region, it is therefore this: build the network around actual and predicted transport flows and the country’s economic geography, integrate it with neighbouring networks, connect major cities with smaller and medium-sized centres, and establish a stable long-term framework before deciding project by project.
That is what I think makes ZSK potentially relevant beyond Poland itself.
Share on:
