Trains will not carry air. Railways will take over 1/4 of air travel

• In the perspective of 2035, the largest number of passengers on the "Y" line can be expected on the section between Warsaw and Łódź. The next place in terms of expected daily traffic intensity is occupied by the section from Łódź to Sieradz.
• The number of passengers at the CPK Station is expected to reach 30.6 thousand per day in 2035, which translates into 11.2 million passengers per year. This traffic scale is comparable to that at the Warszawa Wschodnia station.
• The potential for traffic growth here is significant - in 2050 it is expected to be 48.2 thousand passengers per day, or 17.6 million per year. This is as much as the Katowice Główne station currently handles.

Over 140 million long-distance rail passengers in 2050, over 70 thousand passengers per day on the section between Warsaw and the CPK Airport and almost 60 thousand passengers on the route between the CPK and Łódź in 2035, growing share of rail traffic in travel between Polish cities, ultimately one quarter of air travel in Central and Eastern Europe possible to be taken over by rail

- these are the most important conclusions from the long-term rail traffic forecast for Poland prepared by the Central Communication Port company.

Although the number of rail passengers has increased dynamically in recent years, further passenger growth is ahead of us. This means that it is worth investing in rail. The rail investments we are preparing put the passenger at the center of our attention. Our goal is to shorten the time and improve the comfort of travel and counteract transport exclusion. We will meet the expectations of passengers by planning and building new infrastructure so that trains running on CPK lines do not carry air

- said Maciej Lasek, Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Government Plenipotentiary for CPK.

The new forecasts are more optimistic than the previous ones. The forecasted number of passengers in long-distance transport for 2050 increased from 108 to 140 million passengers. For 2032, the assumed date of launch of the CPK Airport and the Warsaw - CPK - Łódź High-Speed ​​Rail line, between 107 and 117 million passengers are forecasted. For comparison: last year, long-distance rail in Poland carried 78 million passengers.

The update of the forecasts was necessary, among other things, because we increased the maximum operating speed to 320 km/h, which led to shorter travel times and improved efficiency indicators of railway lines . The High Speed ​​​​Rail infrastructure, which is worth tens of billions of zlotys, should serve the largest passenger flows. Transport will continue to grow, which means a significant impulse for CPK and PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe investments, which will be inscribed in market expectations and based on hard numbers.

- said Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Piotr Malepszak.

In the perspective of 2035, the largest number of passengers on the "Y" line can be expected on the section between Warsaw and Łódź. It is 70.5 thousand passengers between Warsaw and CPK (175 full Pendolino trains), and 59 thousand between CPK and Łódź (this number of passengers would fit in 147 Pendolino trains).

For comparison: today , approximately 20,000 people travel on the Central Railway Line (CMK) between Włoszczowa and Grodzisk Mazowiecki per day.

The next place in terms of expected daily traffic intensity is occupied by the section from Łódź to Sieradz (33.5 thousand people per day), in which city the high-speed rail line "Y" branches off to Wrocław and Poznań, which also translates into the separation of traffic flows (16-18 thousand passengers per day).

The number of passengers at the CPK Station is expected to reach 30.6 thousand per day in 2035, which translates into 11.2 million passengers per year. This scale of traffic is comparable to the traffic at the Warszawa Wschodnia station. The potential for traffic growth is significant here - in 2050, it is to reach 48.2 thousand passengers per day, or 17.6 million per year. This is the same as the Katowice Główne station currently serves.

The forecast assumptions include the construction of a railway link that will connect southern Poland with the CPK Airport , including Krakow and Katowice.

The highest growth dynamics in the number of passengers until 2050 is predicted at the following stations:

• Zamosc (445%),
• Nowy Sącz (425%),
• Grudziadz (206%),
• Elk (200%),
• Sieradz (193%),
• Bialystok (181%),
• Zielona Góra (100%).

The forecast was created as part of the largest update of the Passenger Transport Model to date. PMT is an advanced analytical tool used to perform so-called inter-modal traffic forecasts (taking into account different means of transport). PMT has been expanded to include Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in order to better reflect the impact of the Rail Baltica project on the results of traffic forecasts in Poland. The Rail Baltica line, through the Polish section implemented by PLK, will connect with the "Y" line Warsaw - CPK - Łódź - Wrocław / Poznań.

The latest PMT model has also been expanded to include 11 foreign airports : Prague, Ostrava, Vienna, Budapest, Kosice, Lviv, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Hamburg and Berlin. In updating the model, CPK also took into account the latest air traffic forecasts of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) - from the end of 2024. The PMT update was performed by CPK, which employed engineers from the Warsaw, Krakow, Gdańsk, Poznań and Wrocław Universities of Technology.

According to the revised CPK schedules, the HSR section between Warsaw, the CPK station and Łódź will be built and put into operation by the end of 2032 , which will coincide with the transfer of traffic to the new CPK Airport. The remaining sections of the "Y" line: Łódź - Wrocław and Sieradz - Poznań are to be launched by the end of 2035.