What I learned riding transportation in Poland in photos 🇵🇱 🚃 🚅 🚌 🚲 🛴 🚕

6 min readDec 2, 2018

This week I was in Poland and explored a few cities: Warszawa (Warsaw), Gdansk along the Baltic Sea, and Katowice in the Silesian region. In my short time, I was only to capture a fraction of this country’s long and complex history. But at minimum I can share what I observed as a transportation planner. So sit tight, wait for all of the images to load, and enjoy a photo journal of transportation of mostly Warsaw.

Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science is a focal point for the region’s transportation system

Making transit an easy choice.

As an American, it’s easy to say most of Europe (and the industrialized world) has this figured out. Poland didn’t disappoint. Across Polska you’ll see high-speed (premium) intercity trains, regular intercity trains, regional rail, metro, and surface trams. For $38 I made the 186 mile journey from Warszawa to Katowice in 2 hours and 10 minutes (reserved seat and coffee included). A similar trip by car would have taken close to four hours.

Premium intercity trains (left), Warsaw Metro (Center), Regional trains in Gdansk

The Warsaw regional train network (left) and the metro and tram network (right)

Within Warsaw, $4 got me a day pass allowing me to go anywhere in Warsaw. Trains (trams, regional rail, trams) and buses were generally crowded, which made me ask. I bet parking is really expensive. NOPE. Surface parking near the National Museum was less than $1/hour. Maybe it’s because the system is so expansive and the city’s density makes transit successful on its own.

There’s alot of talk in the US about how to make riding the bus sexy. Transit in Warsaw was sexy because it was straightforward, simple and WORKED. On buses, all-door boarding make boarding efficient, it also meant that seats reserved for seniors and disabled could be anywhere on the three-door, low-floor vehicles. I was most impressed with buses that had higher quality on-board information than some of our rail systems in the US. Transit was frequent and reliable.

Trains within Warsaw were relatively straightforward. I found that the wayfinding and signage to be clean and straightforward. The only tricky thing was trying to understand the difference in regional rail operators and what tickets were valid where. Turns out I was overthinking it because there is unified fare zones across operators (naturally). The dream.

🗺 Finding the fast train/train/tram/bus

Typical bus shelters with illuminated signs with route information and the official stop name

Articulated buses with TWO side destination signs (left) and tram arrival board with vehicle accessibility information (right)

Multimodal directions in underground passageways (left), “M” shaped metro entrances (center), the original M1 line (right)

🎟 On-board the train/bus

You can pay for you transit using credit card on the bus (left) on the train (center) and surprisingly on-street parking isn’t that expensive. Transit is also super kid/parent friendly as the area near the TVMs are also for pram (stroller) parking

These are the 💯on-board bus information displays showing stops, time between stops, and transfer opportunities.

If repeating signs aren’t enough, how about a platform-length art-version of the station name?

The M2 line’s stations are organized by colored themes (yellow, blue, and green) to start!

⏱ Making transit reliable

Among other things, one of the key elements of making the extensive tram network reliable is thededicated right-of-way. This means that transit always had an advantage over cars stuck in traffic. Further, cars never delayed a tram from reaching the boarding island.

The central square and crossroads for trams in Katowice

Trams zip along, always in their own lane

Streets / street infrastructure

Street around the world are funny creatures as they’re the same in so many ways, but different in others. For example, bikes. It’s clear that Warsaw has been thinking about bike infrastructure. Relative to those riding transit, there were considerably fewer people biking. This probably has something to do with it being 25 degrees outside. In some of the areas, cycletracks and their smooth pavement also were great for e-scooters. They’re big on “toucan” crossings here (two-can cross, get it?) and there are some difference from the US (and other parts of Europe) in terms of striping.

On-street bike lane transition to a toucan crossing

Transition from street bike lane to cycletrack network and toucan crossing

One challenge with Toucan crossings is the combination of larger turning radii and crossing pulled back from the crossing is that cars will often accelerate and then have to brake once they reach the crossing, and queue right in front of the crosswalk.

A bike crosses in a toucan crossing while a turning SUV hits the brakes. One downside of this crossing placement is that it puts alot of space between the start of the right turn and the crossing.

Red lanes for bikes were often used to mark the start, end, and crossing points for bike infrastructure. Sometimes there was a contra-flow bike lane, other times they’d just point a red lane down a one-way street and leave it at that.

Notice the no-entry signs. Three examples of bike lanes being directed into one-way streets without striped contraflow lanes. The middle picture is a contraflow lane off of a roundabout.

I’ve found much of Northern Europe to be very friendly towards strollers (prams) and this is also useful for bikes. Stairs mostly had ramps or stair channels.

Stairchannel and a dockless car that got loose

Bikeshare was ample and sponsored by Citi (another Citibike). A little side note, folks in Warsaw use staple racks like this (parallel), which further reinforces to me the way that Chicagoans use them is unique. Lime was the only operator that I saw in the city with over 500+ scooters in the area.

One docked bikeshare provider, one e-scooter provider and no dockless bikes.

Like other places in Europe, signals are all nearside, which means in some situations you can’t see what signals anyone else sees. Maybe this is helpful with adherence? (hello future TRB paper?)

Standing at the corner, I didn’t have any idea what other legs of the intersection saw… so I stood there and waited for my turn. Also notice the hatched stop bar.

Parking: “X” indicate parking stalls. I saw accessible spaces often on the curb or split the curb. I think this might be to eliminate the need for wheelchair ramps. But I can’t be 100% sure.

Crossing locations marked by the “P” and the striped “X”. Notice how accessible spaces are either fully on the curb or split the curb (maybe to avoid the need for ramps?)

Zigzags indicate where vehicles shouldn’t stop, stand, or wait. You’ll see them in front of bus stops, driveways, and behind some parking stalls. Right turn movements were often signed but also hatched out.

So what did I learn?

Around the world, transportation is about moving people. There’s plenty we can learn from one another. Transportation in Poland was useful, reliable, and understandable. Those are simple tenets that can and should be implemented in transportation systems in any city around the world.