There will be no turn from Konin to Turku. “Consider other solutions”

Over 27,000 people live in Turku, a poviat city in eastern Greater Poland. A trip to Poznań is a big challenge. After the liquidation of PKS connections, residents can only rely on a private carrier, which offers courses to Konin. From there, you can only look for connections with the capital of the region.

The problem was to be solved by the construction of the railway line on the Konin – Turek section. Its cost was estimated at PLN 660 million. It's just that according to experts, it did not make an economical sense.

– If we allocated this money to the track for the purchase of a transport service instead of the investment, for the costs of the railway investment, so that we could buy this bus for about 200 years – said Dr. Michał Beim, transport expert at the University of Life Sciences in Poznań.

The expert emphasized that this line has an economic sense only as a larger whole. For example, if in the second stage an episode connecting Turek with Łódź was created by Uniejów, Poddębice and Aleksandrów Łódzki. It's just that such an investment was not planned.

Now the calculators have been reached by the Ministry of Infrastructure, the local government of the Wielkopolska Province and PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe. As a result, they withdrew from the investment.

The ministry, which took a closer look at every investment planned for the Plus program, calculated that … 70 passengers would use the merger a day.

According to Anna Parzyńska -Paschke from the Marshal's Office of the Greater Poland Voivodeship in Poznań, the main reason that had an impact on this decision was, however, the inability to finance the investment by interested parties. After developing the project documentation, it turned out that the investment costs would increase significantly – from PLN 660 million to over PLN 1.1 billion.

– It has not been noticed that there is a boggy ground near Warta and that only a 30-meter, but 600-meter flyover, therefore these costs increased by almost 100 percent- explains Adrian Furgalski from the TOR Economic Advisors Team.

It was also taken into account that the implementation of the project in the selected variant met with a negative position of some local governments from this area, as well as social protests.

– The local government of the Wielkopolska Voivodship is constantly seeking the development of the railway network, as well as rail transport in the region. However, the construction of the Konin – Turek railway line, after subsequent analyzes, proved to be irrational in terms of the necessary financial outlays. The cost of costs turned out to be disproportionate to potential benefits, and taking into account social protests, we came to the conclusion that other solutions regarding public transport in this area should be considered – says Wojciech Jankowiak, deputy marshal of the Greater Poland Voivodeship.

Romuald Antosik, the mayor of Turku, does not hide that the problem with communication in the poviat must be solved as soon as possible, regardless of whether it will be a railway or a bus. – We are excluded communicatively and undoubtedly over 80,000 inhabitants at this point cannot get out of Turku by public transport – he said.

The “Construction of the new Turek-Konin” project was submitted in 2020 as part of the recruitment for the Kolej Plus program as one of five projects in the province. He assumed that the newly built railway line would reduce the communication exclusion of this region and improve transport from Turku through Konin to the capital of the voivodship – Poznań.

After qualifying the project for funding under the program and signing relevant contracts, a two -stage formula was adopted. First, the development of project documentation was assumed, and only in the second step the selection of the contractor of construction works.

Several variants of the railway line were prepared during the design work. The selected variant assumed the construction of a new railway line on the Konin – Turek section by Tuliszków, with seven passenger service points and four stops as part of the field reserve. The line was to be electrified, and the estimated travel time on the Turek – Poznań route was set for about 130 minutes.