Poland’s Solidarity Transport Hub is crucial not only for the economic growth of the country and wider region but for European security.
When complete, the Solidarity Transport Hub (known as STH in English and CPK in Polish) will be not just the largest airport in Central and Eastern Europe, but a huge infrastructure project that will quickly and efficiently integrate air, rail, and road transportation.
The four pillars of investment
The STH constitutes a strategic investment based on four pillars. The first and the most recognisable one is a multimodal transport hub – an airport located in the centre of Poland, integrated with the country’s main rail transfer port and connected with the highway network. This is the Solidarity Airport.
The second pillar is the extension and modernisation of the country’s rail transport system. The STH Railway Program includes the construction of a network consisting of around 2,000km of new railway lines. This will make it possible to travel between the capital city of Warsaw and all of Poland’s largest cities in no more than 2.5 hours.
The third pillar is the construction of some 400km of new roads and the full integration of the Solidarity Transport Hub with the existing motorway and expressway system.
Last but not least is Aerotropolis – the future development of the areas around the Solidarity Port – areas that will become, thanks to the port and country’s new public transportation system, the best-connected place in Europe.
At the heart of a cross-Europe transport system
The new central airport for Poland is a strategic investment that has been under discussion since the 1970s. However, it was the current Polish Government that decided in 2017 to take decisive steps in this direction and turned the concept of building a central airport into a strategic investment on a huge scale, which is expected to change the face of public transport in the country and effectively connect Poland and the CEE region with the rest of Europe. As part of the STH project, new high-speed railway lines, which Poland lacks, will be built, and Warsaw Chopin Airport, the main airport for the capital and the country, will be replaced by the new Solidarity Airport.
“The added value of this ambitious project lies in bringing together individual infrastructure projects related to air, road and rail transport into one unified infrastructure programme, to provide the biggest benefit for the transport system and for the economic development of the region,” said Mikołaj Wild, CEO of the Solidarity Transport Hub.
A new transport hub in the heart of Poland, making it the centre of Central and Eastern Europe, will act as a gateway to the rest of Europe and further afield. The residents of Poland, and Czechia, Slovakia, and the Baltic countries, among others, currently rely mainly on transfer hubs in Western Europe, for example in Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, or Amsterdam. The construction of the Solidarity Airport will allow direct long-haul flights from the CEE Region. The new transfer hub is also an opportunity for the economic growth of Poland and its neighbouring countries. Poland, due to its central and strategic geographical location at the intersection of east-west and north-south transport routes, is a natural choice.
Image: STH
