South Korea’s railway operator, Korea National Railway (KNR), has agreed to advise the company behind Poland’s national transportation upgrade – Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (CPK) – on high-speed rail.

CPK will reformat transportation in Poland with a new international airport, highway upgrades, and 2,000km of high-speed rail.

It aims to make all major Polish cities no more than 2.5 hours’ travel time away from the new airport, to be sited some 50km west of Warsaw.

KNR has built and now manages 657km of high-speed rail lines in South Korea.

The agreement signed on Monday by CPK chief executive Dr Filip Czernicki and KNR president Seong-Hai Lee commits them to exchanging knowledge and expertise.

It’s the latest instance of Polish-Korean cooperation on transport.

In 2021, CPK signed an advisory agreement with the operator of Incheon Airport, one of the world’s biggest international hubs.

In mid-2023 a Korean consortium led by Korea National Railway and Dohwa Engineering won the contract to design a 70km section of the high-speed railway connecting Katowice to Poland’s southern border.

Tunnels, switches and diagnostics

CPK said KNR would advise on maintaining tunnels and turnouts, or switches, and railway diagnostics.

Czernicki said CPK aimed “to benefit as much as possible from their expertise”.

Last month, CPK awarded a contract worth around €412m to a consortium led by Austria’s Porr Group to build a high-speed rail tunnel under Łódź (see further reading).

The tunnel will carry high-speed Line 85, a Y-shaped route connecting Warsaw and the new airport with Łódź by 2032.

The line will run west from Łódź to Sieradz, from where it splits to go northwest to Poznań and southwest to Wrocław, forming the Y shape.

It’s scheduled for completion in 2035.