“Our Goal Is Clear: From Warsaw to Berlin, Prague, and the Baltic,” Says PKP Intercity CEO

RAILTARGET presents an exclusive interview with PKP Intercity’s Chairman of the Board and CEO, Janusz Malinowski. At the TRAKO fair, we discussed the multi-billion investments of the Polish national carrier, ongoing liberalisation, and the extension of the Baltic Express route along the Baltic coast.

Mr. Director, we are here at this year’s TRAKO 2025 fair, on board the train of the national passenger railway operator PKP Intercity. You are preparing for a future situation in the railway market that is entirely new. Across Europe, we are experiencing a renaissance of passenger transport, unlike the crisis in freight transport. Tell us, what is the current situation on the Polish market?

Over the past two years, PKP Intercity has increased its travel offer by 20%, and with the new timetable in December, the overall offer will increase by 27% compared to 2024. We achieved this increase with the existing rolling stock by significantly improving the utilisation of rail vehicles. To further expand our services and prepare for liberalisation, we will, of course, need to invest.

At present, we have signed contracts for vehicles—locomotives, traction units from Newag, new carriages from H.C. Cegielski, and modernised carriages from our holding company PKP Intercity Remtrak, hybrid locomotives from PESA Bydgoszcz—for a total value of PLN 16.5 billion(EUR 3.9 billion). We are on the verge of signing a contract for 42 double-deck high-capacity units with an option for another 30 and with a total service period of 30 years.

We expect these units to give us a significant competitive advantage in operational costs compared to classic long-distance passenger trains. In addition to an extensive investment programme in rolling stock, we are also investing PLN 3.5 billion (EUR 883 million) in technical facilities, because maintaining travel quality requires modernising technical infrastructure. We are building halls in Przemyśl, continuing work in Warsaw, and will launch tenders for construction projects in Białystok, Lublin, Łódź, and Gdynia.

You mentioned the largest train tender in Poland’s history. Similarly, a record-breaking tender for double-deck trains is being prepared in the Czech Republic. How do you see the potential for domestic industry development when the final participants in the tender were two foreign companies?

We have sought to ensure that the largest possible part of this order goes to factories located in Poland. The trains will therefore be manufactured in Poland, and the manufacturer (i.e. Alstom) declared that 90% of production would come from Poland. The second participant, Stadler, made the same declaration. From this perspective, we were choosing between the cities of Siedlce, where Stadler manufactures, and Chorzów, where Alstom has its production facility. Trains from these companies operate in their hundreds and are well known throughout Europe; therefore, there is little risk that we would receive trains with malfunctions or insufficient quality. We at PKP Intercity have ensured that the domestic industry can participate and, as I already mentioned, our orders worth PLN 16.5 billion (EUR 3.9 billion) are directed to the domestic industry.

Liberalisation under EU law began in 2024; in Poland, due to extended contracts, the decisive and breakthrough year for public railway transport authorities will be 2030.

In my opinion, tenders will start before the end of 2027. We at PKP Intercity want to be as well prepared as possible. The passenger railway market in Poland is enormous, estimated at 100–140 million passenger-kilometres per year. PKP Intercity currently serves around 85 million passenger-kilometres. To illustrate, this means dispatching 150,000 trains annually and circling the Earth 2,200 times along the equator.

PKP Intercity trains do not stop at the Polish border. You cooperate especially with neighbouring countries. What are your plans for international connections?

Last year, we launched the Baltic Express connection. In cooperation with the Czech Republic, four pairs of trains run daily from Gdynia, via Poznań and Wrocław to Prague, and they are very popular. From the new timetable in December, we will expand our range of international connections.

Currently, we operate 37 international connections from Poland in all directions, and from December, there will be 51. New connections to Berlin, Leipzig, Prague, and Vienna will be added, as well as night trains. We will also extend connections to Lithuania and Ukraine, and in all cases, we cooperate with the carriers of those countries.

I have great news for Czech readers. We want to make the Baltic Express even more attractive next year. The Baltic Express from Prague will no longer end in Gdynia but will continue along the Baltic coast to Ustka. We believe it will be of great interest to Czech tourists, who will be able to reach the beautiful parts of the Baltic coast by train. We are already negotiating this with the Czech Railways.

Alongside liberalisation in Poland, a new high-speed railway infrastructure is being developed in Central Europe. The goal is to have a modern rail system connecting Rail Baltica, southern Europe, western high-speed networks, and central and eastern Europe. How is PKP Intercity preparing to use this new network under liberalised conditions, and are you planning to deploy the trains currently being procured? For RAILTARGET readers, the connection between Poland and the Czech Republic—through Katowice, Ostrava, Brno, and onwards to Austria—is particularly important.

At present, Poland and the investor, the joint-stock company CPK, are implementing the core section of the future high-speed railway network—the so-called Y line from Warsaw through Łódź to Wrocław, with the goal of one day continuing to Prague, and from Warsaw to Poznań towards Berlin. We are preparing and want to be one of the key transport operators on this new infrastructure. Here at the fair, we want to announce the launch of a tender for trains intended for high-speed lines. In the first phase, we are considering twenty trains with an option for another thirty-five, capable of 320 km/h. We would deploy them from Warsaw to Poznań, Szczecin, and Berlin, and also via Łódź to Wrocław. Later, we intend to expand services on this network towards Rail Baltica, the Czech Republic, and routes to Germany. The tender includes not only the trains themselves but also a maintenance centre to ensure repairs and modernisations throughout their 30-year lifecycle.