Railway (settlement) in the Sejm. "We are approaching the results from the Polish People's Republic"

During the debate on the vote of confidence for the government, MP Paulina Matysiak accused Donald Tusk that the quiet revolution on the railways, which the Prime Minister spoke of, consists of the announcement of further group layoffs in PKP Cargo , the lack of new rolling stock for Polregio and the withdrawal of Pendolino from servicing connections to Jelenia Góra, Wałbrzych, Ciechanów or Włoszczowa. Meanwhile, PKP Intercity is launching connections to Croatia, Austria and Italy.

A long way to get PKP Cargo back on track

Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Piotr Malepszak, participating in the Polish Infrastructure Congress, commented on the opinion of the Razem MP.

As he recalled, in 2015, i.e. before the eight-year period when the United Right ruled Poland, PKP Cargo had a 53% share in the transport market. In 2023, this share shrank to 27%.

- This is the result of the destructive management of the company by the trade union leading to its devastation. These are facts, not politics. Today, compared to other large players on the market, PKP Cargo has four times lower productivity per employee. This is a chasm - said Piotr Malepszak.

In his opinion , layoffs and adjustment of employment to market standards are the carrier’s way to survive in a situation where state aid is impossible.

- We are stabilizing PKP Cargo's market share at 26-27 percent, although I am afraid that this is not the end of the decline yet. The road to getting the company back on track will be long - said the deputy minister.

Passenger rail is approaching records from the PRL era

As for passenger connections, in contrast to the stagnant freight transport, their great progress is visible. PKP Intercity has seen a huge increase in operational work. Other carriers are also growing in this respect.

- We withdrew Pendolino from the 126-kilometre Wrocław-Jelenia Góra section, because this commercial connection brought a loss of PLN 14 million. A 400-seater train carried an average of 35 people. The Pendolino fleet is supposed to earn money. You can get to Jelenia Góra by Koleje Dolnośląskie trains, it is a very good carrier, and the Pendolinos withdrawn from there earn money on other routes in Poland - said Piotr Malepszak, who believes that the key to the development of passenger rail is a coherent and stable network of connections.

As he added, passenger carriers recorded over 205 million train-kilometres in 2024 (a measure of the operational work of a railway line, corresponding to the movement of one train over a distance of one kilometre), this year it is to be 220 million. At the peak of passenger transport in Poland, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when car traffic was more than modest compared to today, the operational work of PKP passenger trains (there were no others) amounted to about 230 million train-kilometres.

- We are approaching the results from the Polish People's Republic, operating on a much smaller rail network. However, it cannot be as it was thought until recently, that a railway line will be renovated for a billion zlotys and (only) four pairs of trains will be directed to it per day. We must remember that economic calculations matter . If the revenue from tickets is at the level of 3% of costs, then the sense of launching a rail connection is doubtful. In many cases, it can be replaced by well-functioning cheap bus transport - said the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure, emphasizing that the money spent on the development of railways in Poland is public, which is why we need to carefully observe what effect they bring.

As it results from parliamentary documents, Paulina Matysiak, like other Razem MPs, voted against Donald Tusk's government .