Pendolinos on time for Christmas

PKP Pendolino. Photo: wikipedia

The Pendolino trains will initially run at up to 200 km/h an hour and will be used on routes from Warsaw to Krakow, Katowice, Gdansk and Wroclaw.

According to a PKP Intercity press release the average Warsaw to Krakow ticket will cost 127 zlotys (30 euro), and services to Katowice will cost a similar amount.

The cheapest plane ticket for Warsaw to Katowice is currently 160 zloty. The company has also announced discounts of up to 20% for early bookings.

President of PKP Intercity Marcin Celejewski commented that “Pendolino will be for everyone, so the average price of a ticket will not differ from the one which one would now pay for an Intercity express.”

The new trains will enable PKP Intercity to become more competitive with other forms of travel.

In the first half of 2014 PKP Intercity lost 19% of its passengers, mostly on routes such as Warsaw to Lodz, which now competes against the A2 motorway.

Pendolino journey times from Warsaw to Gdansk will fall from 4 hours, 12 minutes to around 3 hours, and will be further reduced by the end of 2015 to 2 hours 37 minutes.

According to the Rzeczpospolita daily, taking the plane takes 3 hours including travel time from the city centre and a one hour wait at the airport.

The purchase of the trains is part of an ongoing project to modernize Polish railways. Earlier this year PKP Intercity signed a contract to buy 20 Polish-made ‘Dart’ trains, and over the whole of 2014 the related PKP Polish State Railways company will spend 9 billion zlotys (2.1 billion euro) on modernizing tracks. (sl)