Weird and wonderful Polish train fares

It works very well, hence the cheap ticket you managed to find.


On the whole yes. As you can see, they're very popular. The are often quite full compared with the others, the reason for the low price on the pendolino. Plus, they make more stops usually, and obviously appeal to people who live in or are travelling to those towns.


It's a public service. Would you rather any surplus they make go to running children's homes, schools, street lighting or be trousered by a private equity company?

Have you travelled much on Polish railways during your rare visits to Poland? Those of us who've used them daily are happy with the status quo.

yes that's the problem with poland, the 'we are the best' mentality so why try harder? instead of looking at how things are done to the west with our slavic neighbours, and that includes healthcare, beurocracy and other matters.

just look at these sweet RegioJet trains. 4 classes! Even a kids compartment! Unlike Polregio/TLK a lot cheaper than the state carrier!
\regiojet.com/services/services-on-board-of-trains

Why having 4 classes is an adventage?

Had also look at the kids compartment- basically a screen room. I would prefer the old style train for travelling with kids

Since the trains in Poland are far better than those in most places, do they need to?

We don't feel the need to gild the lily, since we Polish taxpayers have excellence anyway, with every groszy in surplus (I'll not sully it by calling it profit) going to maintaining the infrastructure and what's left over being used to support public services.


Who owns that?


Two plus a WARS car is enough.

You keep repeating that but it doesn't make it true, public transport is subsidy based, and revenue negative. Look i understand your position with the disastrous privatisation of Brittish Rail, and the stupid franchising option that john major implemented but really are u arguing that airlines should be run by the government, cause that is what rail is, a transport option. You really want to go back to the days of BOAC/BAE monopoly?


Because each regiojet train has airline style seating, and compartments, and it makes sense to have 2 classes in each category. some people prefer compartments, some people like myself prefer airline style seating. the fact that there is a kids compartment, with tv and toys is like so far ahead of pkp that it blows my mind. also all the other amneties wifi, newspapers, bullt in lcd screens cofee to your seat etc A lazy goverment owned company would never do that.

In Poland, several transport providers providers make a surplus.


You obviously know (or googled) more about that than the way we do things in Poland.

In PL, it works well. BTW, you didn't answer the question about the thing in Czech that you say you like: Who owns that?:

A kick ass entrepreneur challenging czeski drahy by using the open-access operator model. he applied for open access for the major trunk routes in poland but was denied by a gov dept because it would impact the revenue of pkp ic. He's launched prague-premysl-lviv-kyiv train but get this, on the stops in poland (krakow etc) regiojet is forbiden to pick up/dropoff domestic passengers. I'm pretty sure polish passengers can't use this train either to get to lviv/kiev but not sure as to the current state of negotiations.

Gov still gets revenue by renting out the tracks to private operators, and the decrease in price and increase in quality stimulates demand.

So who owns it? Where is the capital from and where will any profits go?


Which belongs to all of us. Not some 'kick ass entreprebneur'.


Kraków.

And there is precedence for that and existing trains which do this.

look if u don't want to admit that czech and slovakia are far ahead of poland in transport, red tape, health care and nepotism, then go right ahead, you can say we do it excellently and status quo remains and there is no room for improvement but u just sound like a typical Polish nationalist. Instead of poles being humble and learning from our western slavic neighbours. (esp with the hospital system)

the open-access operator rail model is mandated by the eu, u know that neo-liberal completion thing that is the EU, Sooner or later, no matter whether it's PiS or PO, open-access rail will be the reality in Poland. I, for one, welcome choosing whether I train PKP IC, RegoJet or Leo Express from Wroclaw from Warsaw.

Poland does very well indeed. Not that Czech is a good comparison due to many factors including population size and density as well as degree of urbanisation


Why not learn from themselves, since they are doing it right. Instead of copying something from elsewhere, an option that has doubtless been considered by those whose job it is to do so.

Let Poland be Poland!


How often do you actually use Polish trains? How they're run is up to those of us who pay our taxes in Poland and use railways in Poland very frequently.

thanks to PiS investment of rail, after PO cut back and neglected.


LOL not far from polska dla polakow ;)

About as far as it gets, given the history of the two phrases.

As mentioned, Poland does well with its railways. By the way, you didn't answer the question about the ownership and financing of your 'kick ass entrepreneur' in a different country who you'd like to see making and taking profits from Polish public services.

As i mentioned, private operators under the open-acess model pay money to the goverment for using the gov owned rail infrastructure, the decrease in prices and niche bussiness class offerings leads to an increase of revenue, and more importantly better connectivity to polish society, and thus more economic mobility. currently the warsaw-krakow price is set artificially at about 60 zloty by pkp ic and tlk, imagine if the low cost seats by regiojet was 30 zloty, how much that would stimulate the economy.

Roughly zero.

So where does their finance come from?


Poland has excellent rail 'connectivity' already. Among the best in Europe. Why change something that works very well?


'Business class'? Like first class with lounges and drinks? PKP has that already and does it very well, as you'd know if you used them regularly rather than commenting from two continents away.

stop playing the man rather than the ball, i love my rail and planes, and rail in poland, how about u stop resorting to the bbc tactics (brit bully boy club) when having a internet postathon.


No like actual wifi on trains, a power point to charge your laptop, a proper table to do work, and newspapers being brought to your seat along with mint tea

People have mobile data in Poland (wifi is old hat and never worked well on trains, privatised or otherwise) and tea (not herbal muck I hope) brought to their set already in first class, as it has been for decades. In second class too on some routes and on the pendolino, people just order food to their seats using an app.

And people have newspapers on their phones (when did you last read a paper one?). We aren't backward in Poland y'know...

u know as well as i do the business elite love the touch and feel of a real paper newspaper in the morning. nothing better to do on a train than hear the page turning of a Fleet Street broadsheet and a coffee, or in this case gazeta prawna.

We used to, but it's handier and greener now to use the app. No 'mint tea' though and I find my in-Poland travel needs satisfied by PKP and the occasional LOT domestic flight.

About open access trains, I'm not 100% opposed to private ones provided they are on routes that are not already served by existing providers and if they produce a net income for the state. And provided they're owned within the country rather than leaching profits elsewhere. The one you mentioned, Grand Central, do that however as I said, they've had a lot of problems and are less successful than you'd expect.

However, about 10 years ago I took kids to the railway station and we entered a train to see what it looked like inside. They were really excited and anxious at the same time, fearing the train would leave with us on board.

Except it's not working very well. that bigmouth.pl site has some interesting articles.

"The activists of the Together party calculated how many 2nd class high-speed rail tickets (in the case of Poland EIP) can be bought for the median earnings in several European countries. Poland fared very badly in this ranking. - for the median salary you can buy only 21 Pendolino tickets from Warsaw to Krakow. This amount is striking, especially when we look at Sweden, where for a median you can buy 41 more tickets to cover almost the same distance in the same time.

Now most of these countries have competition and open access on their railways, thus keeping the goverment owned corporation hones, and stimulating the economy and society through cheaper fares.

Pendolino are crazy expensive sometimes. I tend to favour the normal express trains (which in Poland are a very good price) or if it's Wrocław, fly.

Plus, I don't like the food delivery thing on a Pendolino; one of the joys of Polish train travel is the traditional buffet car.

I have a ticket for next week. 170 km, 2.5 h journey- 21 zl.

I'm happy :)

Have a nice trip.

Thank you. I'm sure I will

A Brit compliments the polish railway and transport system, especially the cleanliness and infrastructure and most importantly cost. I like this guy. Also in another video he said that everyone told him don't go to Poland because they hate gays they hate blacks etc but he went anyway and likes the place. Shows how much the mainstream media insidiously affects people's viewpoints.

youtube.com/watch?v=BJI49SsLPO8

And in contrast to Polish commuter railways this is the situation in america. What a backwards third world country, 70s ticket machines, dirty stations, rails diverted away from towns for the freight companies. youtube.com/watch?v=dwF7fYIw2mI

Compared to public transport costs in the UK, travel in Poland is very cheap. You'd need to ask a Pole if they consider it to be cheap though as obviously cost is relative to earnings. I've travelled all over Poland on trains, buses and trams and agree that the transport system is good and pretty efficient.

I stopped listening to the guy after the first 5 minutes though after he said that you're barely gonna see a toilet at a UK train station. That's absolute crap and not true. I've never been to a UK train station that doesn't have a toilet. He also complained about really crowded trains in the UK. I can excuse that as he uses the London tube but I've been on trains in Poland that have been rammed with people. He's obviously never been on the train from Kraków Airport into Kraków.......


There are similar ticket machines to that in both Poland and the UK. It's not that antiquated. Rail travel is not as common in the US given the huge distances involved so I don't think it's fair when comparing with much smaller countries. Flying is easier and greyhound buses are the much cheaper alternative.

Compare rail transport in single usa state then, to poland and england. it's really crap. true story.

The night train renaissance using the open access model gathers pace. Looks like a legendary train trip brussels to berlin/prague and the guardian writer paints a nice Berlin. Amazingly, this European Sleeper business is a crowd funded startup.

Now if only Poland would allow some competition to PKP with Leo Express,RegioJet and Flixtrain.

theguardian.com/travel/2023/may/29/berlin-to-brussels-night-train-renaissance-gathers-speed-new-european-sleeper

It's an interesting journey.

Shortly before the covids, I went from Eindhoven to Warsaw by rail. It cost more than flying but was much more relaxing and comfortable.