Road construction boom ahead

photo - Nico-Wim Pool/Wikimedia Commons/CC

The construction of planned new roads will require almost 95 billion zloty (22.4 billion euro) and the maintenance and management of existing road will need another 49 billion zloty (11.6 billion euro).

The government plans to finance the construction plans partly from EU funds, worth about 15 billion euro. The remainder will come from the state budget and the National Road Fund.

The main goal for the coming years is to connect regional cities with Warsaw with the help of an express road network.

Another goal that the government will have to keep in mind is the development of roads that are part of the EU's Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T). The bloc wants to focus on the construction of nine major transport corridors, two of which run across Poland.

Polish roads that are on the list of TEN-T key projects are the A1 motorway from the Tri-city to the Czech border, A2 connecting the border with Germany and the border with Belarus and A4, which is meant to go from the German border to the one with Ukraine. The list also includes the S3 (Swinoujście-Wroclaw), S1/S69 (Silesia-Slovakia), S8/S61 (Warsaw-Lithuania), S7 (Gdansk-Warsaw) and S8 (Wroclaw-Warsaw) express roads.

According to data from consultancy PwC, Poland received more than 10 billion euro in EU funds for road infrastructure in 2007-2013, with the construction of 1,500 kilometres of new roads and express road network in Poland growing by 230 percent over that time. (kw)

Source: Polish Radio, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna