During 2000, a substantial restructuring of Polish railways in favour of a liberalised model permission of private operators and external participate, was enacted, one result of which was the creation of PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A. as Poland's new
railway infrastructure manager in place of the unified
Polish State Railways JSC. During May 2010, it was announced that
Bombardier Transportation had been awarded a contract to perform the first implementation of
European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) Level 2 technology in Poland. This initial deployment of the new signalling system was on a section of the E30 main line between
Legnica,
Wegliniec, and
Bielawa and initially co-existed with the traditional signalling equipment already in situ. Multiple follow-on contracts covering various aspects of the project and other sections of the same line was issued over the following three years. During late 2015, it was announced that services using the new ETRMS section had commenced; at the time, Bombardier had a positive outlook towards delivering similar project in the country. One of the benefits of the infrastructure modernisation and provision of higher line speeds was enabling
PKP Intercity to launch operations of its
New Pendolino high-speed trains between the Polish cities of Warsaw, Gdańsk, Wrocław, Krakow, and Katowice. Prior to the commissioning of ETCS Level 2 on the route, the maximum speed was restricted to 160km/h instead of 200km/h. These trains have been certified for operation at speeds of up to 250km/h in accordance with the relevant
Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI), but such operations require suitable infrastructure to do so. Conventional services, both passenger and freight, have also been permitted to run faster when feasible to do so; another areas of improvement is safety, which has been helped by the implementation of continuous digital communication and a reduction in grade crossings amongst other measures. On 10 November 2015, the first phase of the
North Sea –
Baltic rail freight corridor was launched; it is intended to increase rail freight traffic between the most important North Sea ports with Central Europe and the Baltic States, with the new rail freight line interconnecting with the wider pan-European network to do so. Funding for the upgrading of Poland’s railway infrastructure along the
Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) North Sea–Baltic Corridor has been provided by the
European Investment Bank. In early 2018, a five-year contract was signed between
Nokia,
Herkules,
Pozbud,
WASKO, and PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe for the deployment of a 13,800km
GSM-R radio network and a 11,000km mission-critical backhaul network across Poland's railways. The scheme, which has been largely financed by the European Union alongside contributions from the Polish government, will create one of the largest modern railway communications networks and is a key component for ERTMS operations. Multiple contracts were also signed with
Thales Group, a long term supplier of Poland's railways, around this time to design and deliver both signalling and railway traffic control systems, which includes the implementation of Level 2
European Train Control System (ETCS), upon multiple lines. During April 2021, a major milestone in the project was reached with the completion of work on the E65 line between
Warsaw and
Gdynia, permitting the implementation of 200km/h services along it. Into the 2020s, PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe has continued to study opportunities for improvements, such as increasing capacity around
Katowice and raising line speeds between
Szczecin Główny and the Polish-German border. == References ==