Autostrada A2 (Poland)

The A2 highway in Poland is a motorway which, when completed, will run from west to east through central Poland, from the Polish-German border in Świecko/Frankfurt (Oder) (connecting to the German A12 autobahn), through Poznań, Łódź and Warsaw to the Polish-Belarusian border in Terespol/Brest. The highway is a part of the European route E30.

Out of the planned total length of 610 km, 252 km are now completed. A section of about 150 km (Nowy Tomyśl-Poznań-Września-Konin) has been fully open since 2004. This section is a toll road, with the exception of a short stretch through Poznań which serves as that city's bypass. An additional 100 km section from Konin to Stryków near Łódź was opened on July 26, 2006, and will be toll-free until the arrangements for collecting tolls are worked out.

Under current plans, the whole section between the border with Germany and Warsaw should be finished around 2011, giving the Polish capital its first motorway connection to the European motorway network. The section from Stryków to Warsaw, to be built in a public-private partnership, will have its construction company selected in a bidding process by the end of 2008, and the motorway will be constructed in 2009-2011. The section from the Polish-German border to Nowy Tomyśl (105,9 km long) was for a while in a somewhat uncertain situation, as the company which has the concession for building and maintaining that stretch of motorway and collecting tolls on it, "Autostrada Wielkopolska S.A.", was engaged in lengthy negotiations with the Polish government over the terms for financing the project. The contract for building this section was finally signed on August 30, 2008 [ [http://www.mi.gov.pl/2-482be1a920074-1788530-p_1.htm] Announcement on Polish Ministry of Infrastructure official page] . Construction will begin in March 2009 and will finish before the end of 2011.

The eastern section from Warsaw to the border with Belarus, about 170 km in length, is still in early planning stages. Construction of its first half, the section between Warsaw and Siedlce, is scheduled to begin around 2011, with completion occurring around 2014. A short section of A2 forming the bypass of Mińsk Mazowiecki will be built earlier.

It is worth noting that the A2 highway will not formally run through Warsaw, as the inhabitants of the districts through which it was to pass have successfully blocked its construction. This outcome was somewhat unusual, since the corridor for the motorway has been reserved by the city planners since the 1970s and kept free of construction. Instead, the traffic will be rerouted through two "express roads", of lower standard than the originally planned motorway. Paradoxically, one of these roads will run along the originally planned motorway corridor, so the residents who protested the construction will still end up with a busy road running through their districts, possibly even more inconvenient than the original road would have been. In the most affected area, the district of Ursynów, the express road will run in a tunnel, which will be built at considerable expense.

History

The first highway planned along part of this route was a "Reichsautobahn" initiated by Nazi Germany to connect Berlin with Poznań (Posen). The construction of this highway, accelerated after Poznań was incorporated into Germany following the Invasion of Poland in 1939, was interrupted by the war and never finished, but traces of its earthworks are clearly visible on satellite photographs, especially between the border with Germany and Nowy Tomyśl. Many of these traces will soon disappear as the modern highway about to be built will for the most part follow the same route. A short stretch of the uncompleted highway between the border and Rzepin was finished as a dual carriageway road after 1945, in effect forming an extension of the German A 12 highway (opened as a "Reichsautobahn" in the 1930s). Except for this stretch, the construction work was not continued in the decades after the war.

New plans to build the A2 highway were seriously formulated in communist Poland in the 1970s, possibly with the goal of completing it in time for the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Because of the economic crisis which hit the country in the late 1970s and continued throughout the 1980s, only a short section from Września to Konin was opened in the 1980s. Construction of another stretch was started and then abandoned, leaving an interesting ruin informally named "Olimpijka".

Intensive construction of the highway started only in 2001 after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.

Exit list

BAB-weiterBAB-A|12

Frankfurt an der Oder, Berlin
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----Road will continue as DrogaEkspresowaPL|2BAB-E|30 --> Southern Warsaw Bypass.
After bypassing Warsaw, road will continue as AutostradaPL|2----

BAB-weiterMagistralBY|1BAB-E|30

Minsk, Moscow
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References

External links

* [http://www.autostrada-a2.pl/ Official page of the toll company (in Polish)]
* [http://www.siskom.waw.pl/ Page about the planned road network through Warsaw (in Polish)]