Are Polish roads really this bad?

Is that sarcasm i'm sensing ? It's true even back in the 90s the asphalt roads the new ones were as good as they get. That's just how asphalt roads are, after cold winters they crack.

Jezus people .. BUILD concrete roads theyre maybe more expensive but maintience of an asphalt road is far more expensive when you have to rebuild it after a year a concrete road may sustain for years without rebuilding. Read google and start to count. The asphalt lobby has you. :P

They are very strict in the states about over weight trucks, there are weigh stations on highways and there are rgualtions on how often they must stop at them. Also the fines are huge if they are overweight and the truck can be impounded.

I'm asking do the Poles weigh the TIRs as the Americans do?

Part of the problem is... its not very easy to make tarmac that can cope with the vast range of tempretures you get over here...

a possible minus 40 in winter , and plus 30 in summer.....in summer the stuff goes like toffee and then the trucks wear big grooves in it...

Not systematically (no-one does in Europe) - but they have mobile and permament checkpoints where trucks can be weighed.

All trucks are also weighed on the Ukrainian and Belarusian borders as a matter of routine.

However, unlike the US - an overweight truck is a far more serious matter, with the punishment being very severe - so there's not the same problems.

This is not an ecxuse.They have the same tempertures in Germany and their roads don't break after winter nor melt in the summer.

Yes..but they don,t have Germans repairing the roads in Poland...

I would imagine the buildings located in the villages these trucks rumble through must suffer structural damge.

this isn't so. the germans are just quicker to repair the damage.

there was a programme on recently about it. i just can't remember if i saw it on Polish or German tv.

I think this video anwers the question "Are Polish roads really this bad?"
youtube.com/watch?v=0X41eVqFaLU

Does it? Perhaps viewing the bridge collapse in Minnesota, watching Chicago pothole problem, etc. might change your mind. The problem is so dire there that the locals call those orange road construction cones a state flower. Yup I've seen it on youtube.

but you ARE insulting.


No, there is no national pride against foreign contarctors. Many roads are made by foreign contractors... actually, according to the Internet sources, most are made by foreign contractors.

Now, will you make apologies for your insinuations about "incompetent" and "inexperiened" Poles whom is "dumb" to give out money?

Probably because they don't pay as much taxes, are poorer and don't get their roads fixed.

But they can spend all this money preparing for this EURO 2012?

It's the same all over. Places that generate most tax revenue have the priority while places that don't get neglected and eastern Poland is where the impoverished people live, right?

The government feels this Euro 2012 will bring tourism and money to Poland so will put its investment there over everything else.

I hear what you're saying. I do. It's still incomprehensible for me that a country of Polands
business and manufacturing heritage doesn't see how important good, fast roads are especially with Germany right next door! Nie kapoję(I don't get it).

I love this grumpy tone of pf ;) It is so Polish! :-)
Just to prevent mass suicide something to cheer up a little bit:
Wroclaw, new stadium and a new motorway near it, with very fine bridge, should be open this year: Wroclaw bridge

PS. as I already posted, state of national roads in Poland on 30.01.2011:

Nice roads... shame about the countryside....

is this guy ******* serious, are you comparing roads in eastern poland to the autobahn? ill show you roads in my town in america that have been traps for decades, this is in one of the richest areas in the world, roads that are broken concrete and dirt, take a hike.

actually i just read a market study on the auto industry in poland on a villanova link,

pretty much stating the obvious sales are based on delivery of cars, dealership acceptance and available parts/ downtime, volvo was #1 followed by mercedes, ford and chevy were in the middle, i like chevy but only because parts are cheap and available here so, your roads suck get a truck.

Does anybody know if the current road-building effort, that's going on all across Poland is a 24-7 undertaking?

some works are carried out at night.

there are some long road sections which are finished. they just need joining together.

There have been three major construction fiascos in Poland during the last few years and they are not only embarrassing, they are quite costly. A tunnel built recently to divert lorry traffic in Warsaw turned out to be too low for lorries and a few years ago, Polish road authorities produced plans for two sections of a major highway that had they been approved would have missed each other by five miles and ended in the middle of the Polish countryside!

Engineers built a railway tunnel that's too small for trains to actually fit through. The mistake was discovered AFTER the Warsaw tunnel was finished. When inspectors measured, they realized the roof of the tunnel was so low that no trains could pass under it. Oooopps!

Really? And the cause of these mistakes? :(

For these examples I don't know, but there just maybe some similarities to what happened here locally in that a six kilometre stretch of road between Końskowola and Puławy had to be replaced six months after it had been laid. This was because three local officials had fiddled the money to pay for the asphalt and chose a really low grade cheap one, which was then laid, and then four months later the whole road was falling to pieces and had to be replaced.

The weather conditions in Poland require that good quality materials are used , but sadly its often done on the cheap , and soon starts falling apart again....

The motorways in Poland seem to be good quality , and as a biker in Poland i have to say that overall i dont find the roads here too bad....

But then i have ridden and driven in Ukraine , Belarus , and Russia...compared to these places , Polish roads are pretty dam good...!

But they also do it in a better way. In Poland they patch up a small area, then another small area etc... then there is no longer a smooth road 9if there ever was) but a jigsaw of pieces and the bits inbetween then destruct.

Good pics Pawian. Do you remember where specifically they were taken, especially pics #4 - 7?

Wow! The motorways are amazing!!! Beautiful.

Yes.
4 - road Kraków Warszawa.
5 - Kraków Zakopane.
6-7 - countryside near Krakow.