[PL] Polish highways & motorways • Polskie autostrady i drogi ekspresowe

[ikrys]

ITS ALL ABOUT THE ROSPUDA VALLEY WHICH IS IN
EUROPEAN NATURA 2000 NETWORK


I show you closer,whats the problem is,Look below picture
The blue line is independent road designers variant of the Augustow bypass and orange line is GDDKiA variant of the Augustow bypass,GDDKiA is the General Directorate of National road and Motorways
Red lines are the existing national roads,orange tiny lines are existing voivodeships roads



here you've got blue variant area










And here is red area,chosen by General Directorate of national road and Motorways






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Augustów Forest with the unique Rospuda River Valley - an Important Bird Area (IBA)

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Latest: The contrator was chosen and tomorow he could to start the works of Augustow bypass -GDDKiA variant

[ikrys]

Originally Posted by Chris1491

Polish motorways are nice. I heard that A4 is repaired too (i was on that road when it was damaged (2004). Kryzyzowa - Wroclaw).

Many times,there are a lot of mining industry's ,mostly thats why

Originally Posted by Chris1491

But, i have a few questions;
Is there any certainty about the A2 through Warszawa, and east of Warszawa to Brest?
Will there be an A6 from Szczecin to Gdansk or Kaliningrad?
And why for the love of god do they sign tiny places 600 kilometers away near borders? ).

Warsaw -Brest is planned after 2013,A6 dont know
Korczowa is the place where is planned a cross border

[TheCat]

Originally Posted by Cyp

Some pictures from Katowice
http://images3.fotosik.pl/285/a43aa6f750f6e793.jpg
http://images1.fotosik.pl/294/ffa6d9c24b38ec24.jpg
http://images1.fotosik.pl/294/9c297148c17d95a4.jpg
http://images1.fotosik.pl/295/9a78e841c4d55f92.jpg
...

Wow I like the last picture, very cool dynamic traffic management system!

[ikrys]

it has just done... Its the city center of the biggest Polish Agglomeration which is Katowice(called Silesia)

[CborG]

If they can avoid to go through that national park, they better do so. that kind of almost untouched nature is very rare in Europe.

[ChrisZwolle]

However natural areas importance is always exaggerated by environmentalists, they'd better go around this area.

It looks to me, this will gonna be a very quiet motorway.

[aswnl]

And why for the love of god do they sign tiny places 600 kilometers away near borders?

Originally Posted by inz_Krys

Korczowa is the place where is planned a cross border

There is no one in the world who knows that place. No one probably ever wants to go there. Signage is ment for people who are not well-known to the where the road-system will lead you.

So this sign should mention Lviv, not Korczowa.
Also in the other direction: don't mention little nearly uninhabited places near the German border, but mention Berlin or Dresden, from the time you pass a focal city like Wroclav or Poznan.

[ikrys]

yes,agreed

[hkskyline]

EU to seek court injunction against Poland in highway dispute
26 February 2007

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union's top environment official said Monday he would seek a court injunction to suspend construction of a highway in Poland, which is to run across a peat bog protected under EU habitat laws.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said that the EU's executive office would have no other option but to sue Poland at the EU's highest court if it goes ahead with the project.

A court injunction is a rare measure in environmental issues, underlining the seriousness of the latest disagreement between Poland and the EU executive.

"We intend to send to Poland a second warning in the coming days and to bring the case to court to ask for suspension of the works before irreversible damage has been done," Dimas told reporters after meeting Poland's Environment Minister Jan Szyszko.

He said Szyszko indicated that Warsaw would go ahead with the project, which the Commission says ignores EU rules.

"It appears they will go ahead," Dimas said. "It is clear that fundamental requirements under EU legislation have not been respected."

Szyszko said Poland would stand its ground, adding that Warsaw was not afraid of being sued at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

"I am convinced that Poland has acted in accordance with laws and its interests," he said.

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Friday he was in favor of allowing local residents to decide in a referendum whether the controversial road project across the Rospuda River valley in northeastern Poland should go ahead.

Polish authorities have approved plans to construct the 17 kilometer (10 mile) section of the Via Baltica highway, linking Poland to Finland. For 500 meters (yards), the road would cut through a protected peat bog in an effort to bypass a nearby town.

The decision, approved Feb. 9, has provoked protests from environmentalists, who have camped in treetops in the valley.

Kaczynski said that bowing to environmentalists would threaten the entire plan to build some 7,000 kilometers (4,000 miles) of badly needed highways in Poland by the year 2020.

The Commission could impose a multimillion euro (dollar) fine on Poland if it gets the injunction and Warsaw still goes ahead with the project.

[gladisimo]

Well if they can, it's best to go around, not just because environmentalist are pissed about it, I have apart of me that likes nature too =)

[ChrisZwolle]

Maybe they can use noise-reducing pavement. They use that often in The Netherlands. I once biked right next to a single lane road and i almost didn't hear the cars! On motorways ofcourse, you hear more, because of the higher speeds, but that pavement produces way lesser noise than concrete, which is the worse in noise production, but the best in durability.

[ikrys]

Noise-reducing pavement,you mean silent mastics asphalt (SMA)?
SMA is reducing noise about 4-6 dB lesser than conrecte and if we use screens that reduce noise 20dB
Whatever on this bypass is already designed SMA and screens as weel but it not stop the Environmental damages
There are about 5000 traks ride trough the Augustow Town every day,the bypass is needed now...Everything is ready to start built at non-ecological variant. And as I sad there is an alternative

[Patryjota]

DK 1 Katowice - Częstochowa

DK 1 Częstochowa - Piotrków Tryb.



S1 Swiecie bypass

S10 Toruń bypass








A1
fairhair26's, Puls', adas' pictures

[smar]

My explanations to Patryjota's post:

DK - national road ( 4 lanes)
S - highway (2 and 4 lanes)

[Obelixx]

There are many motorways in Poland never completed. One of them is "Olimpijka", a planned motorway from the Eastern to the Western boarder, whose completion was originally planned for the Olympic Games in 1980 in Moscow, but which was never completed.


Never completed bridge of Olimpijka

Construction start of other incomplete motorways was already done before World War II, as these areas were still part of Germany. For example, there are incomplete motorway sections between Szczecin and Elblag.
What is the actual state of motorway between Elblag and Kaliningrad, which was built by the German's between 1933 and 1935?

Show us some pictures of devasted and uncomplete motorways in Poland!

[Krist0f]

No reason to get excited about the Polish motorways, we are dozens of years behind all well-developed countries. Driving in Poland has always been a pain in the ass. It is getting better nowadays, the newly completed motorways look quite OK but we must not forget they are hardly a few years old (on the other hand what's the big deal with a toll two-lane motorway, come on, maybe it would be something worth mentioning if it was for completely for free). Let's wait and see how they will look like in the years to come. We should not also forget how long it takes here to get the work done, come on, is it really that hard to build 2 or 3 complete motorways in a predominantly flat country with reasonably mild climate? Why does it take so long to launch the A1 construction? Polish motorways are not quite a reason to be happy, it is rather a proof how painfully slow the things can be dealt with over here. Fine to have a few finished routed but we need many more kms and fast!

[ChrisZwolle]

RAB between Elblag and Kaliningrad:

[ikrys]

from NATURE

European Commission fights for rare Polish wetland
Mega-expressway may threaten endangered birds.


Sophie Stigler

The Rospuda valley: home to rare plants and animals, or a highway bypass?
Kamila Brzezinska, Save Wetlands Association
Conflicts between environmental goals and construction work may be a dime a dozen. But it isn't very often that the European Commission threatens a government with a court injunction to make road workers step down in favour of preserving nature.

That's what's happening in Poland, in a fight over a highway bypass due to be blasted through the Rospuda valley: a forested area home to a unique wetland system, many rare orchid and moss species, and endangered birds such as cranes and white-tailed eagles.

The bypass is supposed to upgrade an expressway through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, called Via Baltica, which links Warsaw and Helsinki. The 260-million-euro project, due to be completed by 2010, is considered economically vital for the poor northwestern part of Poland. But environmentalists say the expressway threatens to seriously damage a nature reserve designated as a 'special protection area' under the European Union's wild-bird directive.

When in February Polish authorities gave road contractors the green light, the nation was moved to protest. Several scientific bodies have lodged complaints, among them the biology faculty of the University of Warsaw.

Despite a warning that the European Commission issued last December, roadworks and clearing for the project began two weeks ago. "We had to accelerate our normal procedure, because something irreplaceable was about to be destroyed," says Barbara Helfferich, a spokeswoman for the European Commission's environment directorate. On 28 February, the European Commission threatened to file an injunction at the European Court of Justice if Poland failed to respond within one week, and construction activity was suspended.

The Polish government has responded, but says their road does not violate European law. Poland is "open to dialogue with the European Commission", says a spokesman for the ministry. It is unclear if and when construction will resume.

Almost pristine

Rospuda valley contains "a rare mosaic of unspoilt habitats", the Commission says. One of these habitats is a uniquely preserved groundwater-fed mire or fen, once typical of many lowland regions in central Europe.

"Human settlement and agriculture have turned most of Europe's fens into skeletons," says Hans Joosten, a mire ecologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, and secretary general of the International Mire Conservation Group. Joosten is currently drafting a report on request of the European Commission about the mire's ecological value. "Rospuda is the last fen in central Europe that has remained almost pristine. It shows us how such ecosystems have evolved in the last thousand years," he says.

"Rospuda valley is probably the last reference system [of its type] in Europe for restoration ecologists," agrees Wiktor Kotowski, president of Save Wetlands, a Polish environmental group.

Scientists find it hard to predict exactly how harmful the road would have been for the valley. But they do know that it would have reduced breeding areas for already rare bird species. "In the long run [such a road] might destroy the water cycle and thus the whole ecosystem," says Joosten.


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Nature conservation has little priority in Poland, says Kotowski. "Most people don't understand that we either have to protect our heritage or we will lose it." Instead of choosing an alternative route, Poland had offered to compensate the damage by planting trees, creating ponds and restoring wetlands. But the European Commission considered these measures "weak and unconvincing".

If Poland continues road works in the protected site without Brussels's permission, the European Commission says the next step would be to take the case before the European Court of Justice.

[ChrisZwolle]

European Union should stick to international cases in my opinion.

[Verso]

Is it possible to drive on any of these never completed motorways?