The apparent lack of progress in building new highway infrastructure came to the fore at a meeting of the AmCham Infrastructure Committee, following the presentation of the main conclusions of a report on Polish Road Infrastructure prepared by the Civic Development Forum (FOR) in cooperation with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the law firm Wardyński & Partners and 4C Future.

Marcin Radwan from Wardyński & Partners presented the main barriers to the development of road infrastructure in Poland, arguing that they are related to strategic planning and implementation of those projects. "The main sins are frequent changes of concepts for implementing road construction projects," Radwan said.

"This is rather of a managerial nature than any other. It was the main reason why the national program of highway construction has been delayed as different ways of financing were discussed and changed," he added.

The lack of harmonization and inconsistency between different planning and zoning systems is another problem.

"The way of planning the motorway network in Poland is basically by individual planning decisions," Radwan said. "Each one is completely isolated from the other and any other planning systems. In the suburbs of Warsaw we had the situation that a local borough was issuing permits for housing developments whereas at the same time the Warsaw council was planning a bypass road in exactly the same zone. So houses three or four years old were subject to expropriation and demolition because the land was in fact reserved for the construction of the bypass road," Radwan said. In his view the problem is critical. Conflicts of interest on the local level often delay the construction of motorways in Poland. Appeal procedures and legal remedies that interested parties resort to are time-consuming.

"It seems that the way of thinking of accelerating the process by implementing special planning measures is rather less effective than the way of thinking about resolving those issues," Radwan said.

"Having a coherent planning system and just taking into account the time that is needed for proper planning of development. It seems that nobody noted that the special regulations for motorways substantially accelerate the planning process as compared with other countries or other linear-infrastructure projects that require a multi-faceted approach." Another problem is that the environmental regulations don't recognize the complex nature of road construction projects.

"The regulations were devised in the 1990s and are only implemented now after the EU accession," Radwan said. "The government didn't take care during the accession treaty negotiations to get proper interim measures for saving these projects, and now in fact we are looking for different solutions for saving these projects without further delays. But it is difficult. In fact, the harmonized legislation doesn't really recognize the fact that these outstanding planning issues result from decisions made in the 1990s," Radwan said.

Old-fashioned tender procedures are yet another problem which stalls the construction of highways in Poland.

"It is also, to some extent, causing problems with the implementation of projects," Radwan said. "Again, the government tends not to use some methods or some techniques of project evaluation and instead is resorting to only a limited set of tender procedures."

In order to change that situation, according to Radwan, the government should implement a stable and consistent transport policy. "In terms of strategic planning, I think one of the important issues is to stabilize the transport policy not only in terms of the road sector but in terms of interactions between different types of transportation. Certainly it is one of the issues for the government.

It seems that the plan that is currently on the table is quite realistic and may be a good starting point for a further discussion."

Another measure should be the introduction of a consistent zoning and planning system tied to investment projects in other transport areas. "It is much wider than just planning and zoning. It is tied to overall investment projects," Radwan said. "As long as the government does not find a measure to cover the country with a coherent local zoning system we will be facing quite bizarre planning decisions as this area is probably one of the most corruption-prone areas in the country. Local governments don't get any incentives to enter into any serious planning process so they have a tendency to plan on their own the way they govern their local affairs." Yet another solution should be the introduction of good management practices in conjunction with alternative means of investment implementation that would come not from the state budget but the private sector.

"Tha's the key issue. We need an administration which is modernizing itself when it comes to the ways the projects are managed and implemented. It is quite clear that the administration now has an extremely conservative approach to this problem even though it has changed for the last couple of years. Still, it is far from the way the public sector should be dealing with private investments. Those are barriers for investment in general and frankly speaking, most private investors in Poland overcome this problem in terms of planning or environmental issues even if they are complaining about the state of administration," Radwan said.

Offective planning is imprtant as Poland will receive PLN 63 billion to spend in 2009-2015. The national contribution to that amount is estimated at PLN 11 billion. But Polish municipalities and the central government may find it difficult to scrap the money they are supposed to add to road construction.

Maja Koźmińska from PricewaterhouseCoopers said that an alternative is Public Private Partnership projects, a type of financing that is getting recognition by the General Inspectorate of Roads and Highways, Poland's largest manager of road construction projects.

At the end of 2008 Poland had 730 kilometers of motorways and 450 kilometers of expressways. Poland did better than Romania, Finland and Estonia. The leaders, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium, have at least 20 times higher ratios of modern road infrastructure. At the same time, in terms of tonnage of goods transported by road annually, Poland is Europe's fifth top transit country following the UK, Germany, Spain, and France. Yet, half of Poland's national roads are in poor technical condition.

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