Public transport in Poland

As a result of the political changes in Poland after 1990, public transport was taken over by the municipal authorities. Town authorities in Poland have been given control over the property and are entitled to run public transport services.

The State authorities, however, when leaving public transport, did not provide the towns with due financial means. Local authorities were forced to increase public transport fares and reduce financial means to replace the transport equipment with the new equipment and maintain the infrastructure. As a consequence, public transport branches are hardly diverse, with a great majority of buses and low standards of transport services. Yet, it is positive that the market of public transport services is becoming liberalised and it still has a high share in all transport services. The increase of gas fumes emissions, noise and traffic congestion continuously deteriorate life standards in towns.

The Polish Government is going to run an active policy in public transport

First of all, the Government is oriented to set new objectives of public transport nationwide and prepare the legal, financial and operational framework for their implementation.

One of the priorities of the Ministry-drafted Transport Policy 2007–2020 is to increase transport accessibility. It aims to improve the standards of public transport services, develop public utility services and use telematic systems in transport.

The Policy assumes to absorb some ?2bn of the Cohesion Fund for the development of public transport in 9 Polish agglomerations in 2007–2013. It is supposed to support the projects of rail systems development along with the purchase of new rolling stock and projects of telematic systems development.

Polish towns will be advised to apply for structural funds. It is regional authorities that designate the amount of funds for the development of transport in towns, set objectives, and define how they will be implemented. It is also planned to draft new legal provisions that will enable the efficiency of public transport, its organisation and financing to improve.

Financial perspective of 2007–2013 will bring the biggest investments in public transport. It is assumed that the same investment scale will go on in 2014–2020.

Full absorption of the accessible supportive funds will assist the arrears of transport infrastructure in towns. The Polish agglomerations should have transport systems of standards characteristics of the most developed cities in EU by 2020.