An agreement was reached in Warsaw at the end of January as part of the Railway Direction Days event. The aim of the conference was to generate and rationalise joint investment in railways. The agreement covers all the countries in the Visegrad group (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) as well as the Baltic States and Ukraine.
On the sidelines of this meeting, the following documents were signed a three-year agreement between Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznyca) and CPKshort for Centralny Port Komunikacyjny, a new multi-transport hub launched by the Poland.
"The plans call for the construction of 4,500 kilometres of railway linesand the Warsaw-Kiev line will be one of the biggest and shortest between Ukraine and the EU".commented Mikołaj Wild, CEO of CPK at a press conference.
CPK is located between Warsaw and Lodz, Poland's second city. It will include an airport for 40 million passengers in phase 1, a TGV train station, motorways and a multimodal freight platform.. According to the Polish government's plans, CPK is due to open in 2028 and become the major transport hub for the whole of Central Europe.
The new line linking Ukraine to the EU via Poland will run from Warsaw to Kiev, passing through Lublin and Zamosc on the Polish side and Lviv on the Ukrainian side.. It will be a high-speed railway line with trains travelling the 800 km at 250 km/h. A journey time of 4h00 to 4h30, compared with almost 15 hours today..
All of Central and Eastern Europe connected via CPK
The line will be built in compliance with European track gauge standards, using only the 1,435 mm gauge. "Together with Ukrainian Railways, we are starting to work together on the Warsaw-Lviv-Kyiv line. This is a historic moment," Mikołaj Wild emphasised.
The new line will enable Ukraine, now on the doorstep of the European Union following the official acceptance of its application by the EU Presidency, to be integrated even more rapidly.
The new multimodal hub at CPKwhich will also house a conference centre and hotels, passengers will have connections to 2,000 km of high-speed rail lines for the rest of Poland, as well as the Baltic States, Slovakia, Hungary and eventually Germany.
For its part, CPK is already working on investment variants for the 140 km section of the high-speed line between Warsaw and Lodz, the 200 km between Lodz and Wroclaw and the 40 km between Stalowa Wola and Rzeszow.
" A major advantage of the CPK will be its intermodality and central location, with excellent connections to every part of Poland and to countries all over Europe.. Thanks to these elements, it will be possible to move people or goods efficiently from the centre of Poland to any part of Europe", describes CPK's management.
