In November, the state-owned railways will launch a billboard marketing campaign encouraging to use trains instead of planes. On December 9th, 11 new trains will be added to the schedule, going to Amsterdam, Basilea, Munich, Budapest or Odessa. Czeslaw Warsewicz, PKP IC CEO assures that the tickets will be much cheaper than at airlines.
The railways will be much slower then planes, however, especially that they will need to have locomotives exchanged at the borders. PKP IC does not have such locomotives.
“Not yet”, Czeslaw Warsewicz stressed.
The tender to deliver 10 locomotives able to work also abroad is about to end. Bombardier and Siemens are in the second stage of the tender. The winner should be chosen as early as this year. New locomotives are just part of PKP IC investment plan till 2010 worth PLN 2.7bn (EUR 726.3m). Next to the locomotives, the company will buy 30 new carriages. It will also modernize all passenger carriages and 50 restaurant bars. PLN 700m will come from EU funds, PLN 500m will be raised on the stock exchange, PLN 600m will come from credits. The company will provide PLN 800m of its own funds.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.269)