Poland needs to scrape away its inefficient methods for dealing with winter weather Shutterstock

“Keep moving, keep warm.” So goes the common wisdom, but it’s not always that easy to follow in Poland. As December proved – and January and February may yet – the country’s transport infrastructure is at the mercy of the weather.

Preliminary estimates in the press have put the cost of coping with this winter’s snow at between zł.1.3 and zł.1.5 billion. And that’s just the cost of keeping the roads open.

To put this into context, Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski recently announced that 2010’s budget deficit would likely come in at zł.45 billion. If the country could find a more efficient means of dealing with the winter, then extra funds could be spent on balancing the budget, possibly cutting the deficit by three percent.

Slippery savings

The significance of the issue is not lost on Poland’s cash-strapped city halls. Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, for one, has suggested that her transport officials should find a cheaper and more effective alternative to salting the capital’s roads.

Quite what that alternative should be remains unclear, however, as most other de-icing substances are significantly more expensive, according to Tadeusz Godlewski of the Road and Bridge Research Institute. Speaking to the Polish Press Agency, he noted that salt works well to -7° C, but quickly becomes less efficient at colder temperatures. Pricier solutions are then required, but even these are used sparingly in Europe and often mixed with more affordable substances.

Moreover, Warsaw has already shaved a few million złoty off its winter road clearing budget, which stood at zł.101 million for the 2009/10 season and is currently zł.95 million. This bill for winter is still heaps larger in Warsaw than outside it though – Kraków, for example, has budgeted for just zł.29 million this winter.

The cost to city budgets is plain to see. Less easy to gauge is the indirect cost to the economy. When winter grips the city, deliveries are held up and employee tardiness increases. Simply put, less business gets done.

Lack of belief

Businesses appear to be on their own, to some extent. But some cities have made magnanimous gestures to alleviate the burden on individuals at least. Kraków offered free public transport during the worst of December’s snow and heating braziers were set up at tram stops around the city, although this was little more than a stopgap measure.

According to Michael Beim, a transport expert at the Sobieski Institute, a think tank, other European countries maintain good technical and organizational operations to keep their cities moving in the winter. The problem in Poland, he says, is that the central government virtually ignores public transport.

“I think the current situation is the result of a lack of belief [by central government] in the importance of public transport in Poland,” Mr Beim said. “The subject has been passed on to local governments – since 1990 to municipal governments for local transport, and since 1999 to provincial governments for regional transport – and forgotten about. Unfortunately this cannot be effective in the long run.”

Gone off the rails

Austria is one European country described as having robust local transport policies. Indeed, there are interesting comparisons to be drawn between Vienna and Warsaw.

Too rare a sight when big snowstorms hit Poland Shutterstock

It’s not that Poland lacks for ideas as to how it can improve its public transport. Jakub Majewski, former chairman of Masovian Railways, has suggested the creation of multi-purpose “rapid response brigades” to provide blankets, medicine and hot drinks for stranded passengers as well as to repair or remove broken-down trains.

And trains, as any recent rail passenger in Poland will likely have noticed, do break down. If they turn up at all. PKP Intercity caused a major stir on December 12, when it introduced a new timetable and published the wrong times – and even the wrong platforms – for some departures and arrivals.

The debacle cost Juliusz Engelhardt his job as deputy infrastructure minister. And his successor, Andrzej Massel, promptly fired PKP president Andrzej Wach.

Political, technical and weather problems only exacerbated the situation last month, according to Mr Beim.

“The change to the timetable was part of the political element. The Infrastructure Ministry sought to limit the number of trains operated by InterRegio Regional Transport, in order to support Intercity’s ‘cheap airline railway’ trains,” he noted. The upshot was that the number of trains available was limited, so passengers were crammed in together. Moreover, they were often left without information about which trains would go and which would not.
“The technical problems came down to the fact that PKP Intercity was not technically ready for an increased number of passengers,” according to Mr Beim.

He added, “The third factor, but probably not the most important, was the weather. Cracked rails, no snowplows, the inability to cope with slippery surfaces – this is the result of years of neglect and failure to invest.”

A need for scrutiny

Chronic, systemic neglect is a recurring theme when Poland’s public transport system or its roads are discussed. Repairs in both cases are often shoddy, requiring frequent additional work, and winter takes a major toll on both roads and rails.

But Mr Beim cautioned against extreme pessimism: “You cannot say that this problem cannot be solved.” Many countries where winter is harsher and whiter, such as Switzerland, still manage to function efficiently.

Addressing railway infrastructure in particular, Mr Beim stated, “There are many ways to improve. Some require large outlays, for example track renewal or the purchase of new rolling stock. Others are relatively cheap. These include improvements to passenger information, better competition for Intercity, or even ‘emergency brigades.’”

Again, ideas appear to be plentiful enough. What’s missing is the political will to help state-owned transport companies get their acts together.

“In Poland there is no strategy to combat the effects of winter on the railway. For example, the problem of adequate numbers of snowplows has been unresolved for decades,” Mr Beim posited. He believes that a solution can be found, if there is more openness.

“Nobody will talk about the actual cost of the chaos,” he stated. “There needs to be a fair debate about the costs involved, otherwise it is difficult for the public to scrutinize the industry and seek solutions.”

Anthony Casey

Feature: Learning from the Finnish

For film fans in Poland, this is going to be a memorable winter for all the wrong reasons. Actor Liam Neeson was due to appear at the 2010 Camerimage festival in Bydgoszcz, held at the turn of last November and December, but snow disrupted flights between London and Warsaw, disappointing film fans. Festival organizers had planned to present the actor with the Krzysztof Kieślowski memorial award at the event – but the weather had other plans.

The absence of the Hollywood A-lister (he played Oscar Schindler to much critical acclaim) may have created a stir at the time, but Neeson was just one of thousands of air passengers grounded across Europe.

In Poland, the airports at Wrocław and Warsaw reported delays in heavy snow, as operations were halted and staff were sent out to clear runways. Other airports in Poland did not report any significant delays.

It could have been much worse. Across the UK – a nation noted for its obsession with the weather and failure to deal with it – airports reported lengthy delays and swathes of cancellations. And when the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, closed, it cut off thousands trying to reach other parts of Europe and beyond. This in particular had a knock-on effect on tourism in Poland; one hostel owner lost almost zł.6,000 overnight because of cancellations caused by the problems in Frankfurt.

Many of these airports – Poland’s included – could learn a thing or two from Finland. The country’s Helsinki Airport last closed due to snow in 2003 despite regular winter deluges.

“We can manage to remain open because have the equipment, personnel and processes to handle different kinds of snow and ice situations. We also train, review and develop these processes thoroughly and continuously,” said Heini Noronen-Juhola, the airport’s vice president for aviation and safety.

“Winter maintenance is ready to work from mid-October until mid-April, so the bad weather can come any time and we are ready,” she added. The airport justifies this investment by the fact that it loses income from landing fees every time it closes.

“All countries and airports have their own layout, legislation and other parameters, but I’d say that we have excellent winter processes and tactics in every way, and that is something from which everyone could learn,” Ms Noronen-Juhola stated. “It’s not really about the number of snowplows or people.”