Highways in Poland



Controlled-access highways in Poland are part of the national roads network and they are divided into motorways and expressways. Both types of highways feature grade-separated interchanges with all other roads, emergency lanes, feeder lanes, wildlife crossings and dedicated roadside rest areas. Motorways differ from expressways in their technical parameters like designated speed, permitted road curvature, lane widths or minimal distances between interchanges. Moreover, expressways might have single-carriageway sections in case of low traffic densities (as of 2024, such sections constitute 3.5% of the highway network).

The development of modern highways began in the 1970s, but proceeded very slowly under the communist rule and for the first years afterwards – between 1970 and 2000 only the total of 434 km of highways were constructed (5% of the planned network). Further 1050 km (13% of the network) were opened from 2001 to 2010, followed by 2773 km (34% of the network) constructed between 2011 and 2020. It is planned to open about 3000 km (about 37%) in the 2020s, while the last 10% would be completed after 2030.

, there are 5117,1 km of motorways and expressways in operation (62% of the intended network), while contracts for construction of further 1246 km (15% of the network) are ongoing.

Except for the single-carriageway expressways, both types of highways fulfill the definition of a motorway as characterized by OECD, WRA or Vienna Convention. Speed limits in Poland are 140 km/h on motorways and 120 km/h on expressways (100 km/h in case of single-carriageway expressway sections). Some motorway stretches are tolled.

Technical parameters

 * Znak D9.svg Motorways are public roads with controlled access which are designated for motor vehicles only, and feature two carriageways with at least two continuous lanes each, divided by a median. They have no one-level intersections with any roads or other forms of land and water transport and have wildlife crossings constructed above the road. They feature emergency lanes and feeder lanes, and are equipped with dedicated roadside rest areas. Motorways are the only roads in Poland which use blue background on road signs - others use green road signs.
 * PL road sign D-7.svg Expressways share most of the characteristics of motorways, differing mainly in that:


 * 1) Expressways are designated for lower speed than motorways. For example, the road curvature can be higher and the lanes are usually narrower (3.5m vs 3.75m). Emergency lanes can also be narrower (2.5m vs 3m) and in exceptional situations expressways might not have them at all.
 * 2) Expressways can have a single carriageway on sections with low traffic density.
 * 3) Motorways can have interchanges only with main roads and the distance between interchanges is typically not less than 15 km (or 5 km near major cities), while expressways typically have more frequent interchanges. In exceptional situations, expressways might not have dedicated feeder lanes on interchanges.

Formally, expressways are also allowed to admit a one-level junction with a minor public road in exceptional cases, however in 2020 the last such remaining junction in Poland was reconstructed into a two-level interchange.

List of motorways and expressways
In 2004, the government published a document defining the planned highway network of length about 7200 km. Notable changes introduced in later amendments include re-routing S8 and adding S61 instead (a change related to the Rospuda Valley conflict), introducing S16, S52 and A/S50, as well as extending S5, S8 and S10.

The planned network consists of 16 major highways (over 200 km of intended length): A1, S3, S5, S7, S11, S17, S19, S61 running north to south and A2/S2, A4, S6/A6, S8/A8, S10, S12, S16, S74 running west to east, as well as 9 shorter highways:



As of 2024, the operational sections of highways utilize the following cross-sections:
 * 7% (354 km) – motorways and expressways with 2x3 or (occasionally) 2x4 or 2x5 lanes,
 * 89.5% (4589 km) – motorways and expressways with 2x2 lanes,
 * 3.5% (178 km) – single-carriageway expressways, of which: 109 km with 1+1 lanes, 53 km with 1+1 lanes and dual-carriageway fragments (2x2) around the interchanges, 16 km with interchanging 2+1 lanes.

All single-carriageway expressways are constructed with allocated space for a possible upgrade to dual-carriageway and all bridges above such highways are prepared to accommodate the second carriageway. Most of those sections are planned to be widened to full profile by 2033, the exceptions being S1 (near the Slovak border) and S22 (near the border with Kaliningrad Oblast) where widening is currently not expected.

Tolls
Since 2023, almost all highways are free for vehicles up to 3.5 tons of permissible maximum weight (for a passenger car with a trailer, the joint permissible maximum weight of the car and the trailer must not exceed 3.5 tons ). On some sections, the old infrastructure for toll collection is still in place.

The privately-owned sections of A2 and A4 are tolled. In the closed system, there are toll stations on every interchange both entering and exiting the tolled section; the driver receives a ticket upon entering the motorway and pays on the exit, with the price dependent on the distance driven. In the open system, two toll stations are located at the ends of the section; a person driving the whole distance pays at both gates, while a person entering or leaving the motorway mid-section pays only at one gate. The following sections are tolled:


 * A2 Rzepin – Poznań-West (managed by AWSA): 133 km, 50 PLN ($), closed system. (The bypass of Poznań is free. In particular, it means a person driving through S5 or S11 does not need to pay for using the common section of A2.)
 * A2 Poznań-East – Sługocin (managed by AWSA): 85 km, 64 PLN ($), open system.
 * A4 Mysłowice – Kraków-Balice (managed by Stalexport): 52 km, 32 PLN ($), open system; it is possible to pay automatically using electronic toll collection by the Autopay mobile app, which allows one to save much time by choosing the "fast gates" for e-toll, instead of waiting in the queue to the regular gates that support both manual and electronic toll collection. (The bypass of Kraków is free. In particular, it means a person driving through S7 or S52 does not need to pay for using the common section of A4.)



Vehicles over 3.5 tons and buses
Using e-Toll is obligatory for buses as well as all vehicles with maximum permissible weight exceeding 3.5 tons (including the trailer) while driving on the Polish roads (not just the highways). More details can be found on the e-Toll website.

Traffic volumes
Traffic volumes in Poland note rapid increase since the fall of communism in 1989: the annual average daily traffic recorded in 2020 amounts to over 360% of the average traffic recorded in 1990. With the increasing traffic, the length of overburdened single-carriageway national roads had also been steadily increasing until reaching the maximum of 1389 km in 2010. Due to the large number of highway sections opened between 2010 and 2020, in that decade the length of overburdened roads has fallen down for the first time in history, from 1389 km in 2010 to 1121 km in 2020.

The latest general measurement was conducted in 2020, although some measurement days were moved to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic which would have caused the results from 2020 to be unreliable. The following highways recorded the highest volumes:

The other highest and lowest recorded AADT values were:

Substandard highways
Motorways and expressways constructed before 1999 do not have to fulfill technical parameters listed in the ordinance. As of 2024, one notable case of a substandard highway remains:
 * A4 on the section Krzyżowa – Wrocław (103 km) was constructed in years 1934 – 1937 (then the territory of Nazi Germany) and renovated in years 2002 – 2006. The road received new high quality surface but the geometry was kept unchanged and many overpasses above the motorway were kept. In effect, this part has no emergency lanes and the speed limit is decreased to 110 km/h. Its full reconstruction (and widening to three lanes per direction) is scheduled for years 2026 – 2030.

Notable historical cases are:
 * S3 near Szczecin (19 km) was opened in 1979 and it featured two at-grade road intersections, as the last such expressway section in Poland, until the reconstruction in years 2019 – 2020.
 * A6 near Szczecin (29 km) was constructed by Nazi Germany and kept using the original surface made of concrete slabs until the reconstruction conducted in years 1996 – 1999 and (easternmost fragment) 2017 – 2021.
 * A18 (70 km) had its southern carriageway constructed by Nazi Germany. The northern carriageway was constructed in 2004 – 2006, while southern carriageway kept using the original concrete slabs until the reconstruction conducted in years 2020 – 2023.

Before World War II
The first plans of creation of a national highway network in Poland were conceived in the interwar period: Plans The main promoter of this concept was Professor Melchior Wladyslaw Nestorowicz of the Warsaw University of Technology, who organized three Road Congresses, during which a group of specialists discussed the creation of the network. On March 5, 1939, in the trade magazine Drogowiec, Professor Nestorowicz proposed a very ambitious plan for the construction of almost 5,000 kilometres of category I and II roads, based on similar programmes in Germany and Italy. Nestorowicz sketched a map of the future system with the following routes:

First class roads would, according to the plans, consist of the following motorways (totalling some 2500 km:
 * Warsaw - Łódź - 100 km
 * Warsaw – Poznań - Polish-German border - 350 km
 * Warsaw beltway - 130 km
 * Poznań beltway - 80 km
 * Gdynia – Bydgoszcz – Łódź – 500 km
 * Łódź beltway - 90 km
 * Bytow - Free City of Danzig border - 50 km
 * Katowice – Kraków – Lwów - 375 km
 * Warsaw – Lublin - Lwów – Sniatyn - Polish-Romanian border - 550 km
 * Puławy – Sandomierz – Przemyśl - 175 km

Second class roads would consist of the following motorways, totalling another 2295 km:
 * Piotrków Trybunalski - Kielce - Sandomierz - 180 km
 * Warsaw – Kielce – Kraków - 180 km
 * Łódź - Kalisz - Polish-German border north of Wrocław - 130 km
 * Warsaw – Grodno – Vilnius – Polish - Lithuania - Latvian border near Daugavpils - 575 km
 * Grodno - Nowogrodek - Polish-Soviet border near Minsk - 190 km
 * Bydgoszcz – Poznań – Częstochowa - 350 km
 * Katowice – Cieszyn – Polish-Czechoslovak border - 60 km
 * Ostrołęka - Polish-East Prussian border - 50 km
 * Grodno - Polish-Lithuanian border - 40 km
 * Grodno - Brzesc nad Bugiem - Krasnystaw - 300 km
 * Warsaw – Brzesc nad Bugiem - 170 km

In 1934, Nazi Germany started the construction of their motorway system, parts of which today form A18 and A4 to Wrocław (Breslau), as well as A6 (Szczecin bypass) and S22 (parts of the planned motorway to Königsberg). About half of them were constructed as single-carriageway with the intention of adding a second carriageway in later years. However, after 1938, warfare expenses meant little money would be invested into any infrastructure and only one 9 km single-carriageway piece west of Gliwice (now A4) was constructed.

In Poland, a 28 km stretch between Warlubie and Osiek (now DW214) was constructed in 1937 – 1939 in the motorway standard of the time (today not considered a highway) with a concrete surface, which was designed by Italian engineer Piero Puricelli. The motorway was planned to reach Gdynia, but the outbreak of the Second World War halted the plans.

1945 – 1972
The Potsdam conference defined the borders for communist Poland, which were very different from the pre-1939 ones. It received the so-called Regained Territories from the former Third Reich with the aforementioned motorway sections (some of them with first carriageway only). Most of the motorway bridges were destroyed by the warfare, but only a few were repaired or rebuilt in the first post-war years. The bridge over Ina river was reconstructed in 1972, and those on S22 only between 1996 and 2003.

Apart from the bridges, almost all the motorways were left in the same condition as they were in 1945 until the mid-1990s. The only road left from Nazi times that was completed by the People's Republic of Poland was a one-carriageway small section between Łęczyca and Lisowo (15 km of what is now DW142), which was built on the previous works of Nazis.

Plans At the post-war year there were very ambitious plans to make a motorway network for the whole Poland. For example, engineer Eugeniusz Buszma has published his propositions to the network in the magazine "Drogowiec" (1946, issue 1): In total, the mileage, according to the proposal, would total more than 3300 km.
 * 1) East – West (Słubice – Warsaw – Białystok) – 680 km
 * 2) North – South (Gdynia – Warsaw – Balkans) – 650 km
 * 3) Silesia – Baltic I (Gdańsk – Łódź – Katowice) – 460 km
 * 4) Pomeranian (Gdańsk – Szczecin) – 280 km
 * 5) Silesian (Wrocław – Katowice – Kraków) – 190 km
 * 6) Mazurian (Kaliningrad – Elbląg – Malbork) – 20 km
 * 7) Silesia – Baltic II (Bydgoszcz – Wrocław) – 260 km
 * 8) Łódź – Wrocław – (Prague) – 310 km
 * 9) Katowice – (Vienna) – 60 km
 * 10) Poznań – Szczecin – 200 km
 * 11) Radom – Lublin – (Lviv) – 220 km

After the addition of the sections built by the Third Reich the total network length had to be approx. 3700 km. In 1963 the Motorization Council at the Council of Ministers had presented the similar plan plus the motorways: Warsaw-Kraków-Zakopane, Kraków-Przemyśl, Warsaw-Bydgoszcz-Koszalin, Poznań-Koszalin i Warsaw-Terespol (approx. 1250 km). Despite announcing such pompous plans, no motorway was opened in the meantime.

In the 1970s
Only in the 1970s did any works start. Plans In 1972 it was planned to build:
 * the Gliwice-Kraków motorway (now A4)
 * the second carriageway of the Wrocław-Gliwice motorway (also A4)
 * the Warsaw-Katowice motorway (so-called "Gierkówka", now the S8/A1 road), in the near future

The plans were expanded in 1976 by the following sections:
 * Tarnów – Kraków (now A4),
 * eastern GOP (Górnośląski Okręg Przemysłowy) bypass (now S1, northern part),
 * Bielsko-Biała – Cieszyn (now S52, southern part),
 * Warszawa – Poznań (so-called Olimpijka, now A2),
 * Łódź – Piotrków Trybunalski (now A1).

In 1973 – 1976, "Gierkówka" dual carriageway from Warsaw to Katowice (281 km) was built. Originally planned as a motorway, it was in the end constructed by adding another carriageway to the existing road, hence going through many villages and crossing with local roads. The part from Piotrków Trybunalski to Częstochowa (78 km) was constructed on a new route in a motorway alignment, but nonetheless the majority of the crossings between the highway and the other roads were constructed as one-level intersections with no viaducts or overpasses.

In the 1980s
Near the end of the 1970s the first construction of motorways started and continued to the next decade. The roads opened in the 1980s were the first motorways and expressways which generally meet the contemporary standards (at least with respect to their more important attributes), although in multiple cases the poor quality of their construction forced major renovations to be performed as soon as within the first 20 years of operation.

The major routes planned as motorways were A1, A2 and A4, while other main routes were planned as expressways. The implementation of these plans, however, came at a very slow pace: throughout the 1980s, only an average of 20 km of highways in the whole country were being opened per year.

In the 1990s


In the III Republic of Poland, planned S3 was promoted to motorway A3 (the decision was later reversed) and a plan was introduced (also later reversed) of constructing motorway A8 Łódź – Wrocław – Bolków (now S8/A8/S5). Szczecin bypass (A6) and section Olszyna – Krzywa (then named A12, now A4/A18) were promoted to motorways, even though at that time the majority of their lengths was in bad shape, laid with the original concrete surface from the 1930s with no significant works having been performed on any of them throughout the whole communist period.

In the 2000s
As of the beginning of 2000, the vast majority of national and international traffic routes were served by regular national roads with at-grade intersections and pedestrian crossings, most of them leading through the centres of cities, towns and villages, and most of them single carriageway. Only the following number of highways was present:
 * about 275 km of modern dual-carriageway motorways and expressways (3.5% of the network as planned nowadays),
 * about 90 km of single-carriageway expressways,
 * about 125 km of not-resurfaced Nazi German motorways from the 1930s,
 * about 150 km of not-resurfaced Nazi German motorways on sections where only the first carriageway had been constructed.

Before Poland received the EU membership


At the beginning of the 21st century, the tempo of highway construction started to increase. The main focus was on the west-east motorways A4 and A2. In 2002, a long-awaited renovation of the A4 from Krzywa to Wrocław (93 km) has started, which included laying new high quality surface in place of the Nazi German concrete slabs, reconstruction of all the pre-WWII bridges on the motorway and renovation of the viaducts above the motorway.

This is also the period when Poland started introducing motorway tolls, first in 2000 for the A4 section between Mysłowice and Kraków.

Poland in European Union
1 May 2004 was a crucial day for the history of motorway construction and that is when the length of highway constructions increased the most. One of the major advantages of signing the European Union access document was that Poland could get access to large funds for co-financing the construction of new roads and upgrades of the existing road infrastructure.

These years, the existing scattered pieces of highways began to converge into the basis of the future network: A large number of expressway bypasses of towns were also constructed at this time. On many of them, only one carriageway was built, with the allocated space prepared for easy construction of the second carriageway later.
 * until 2004, Katowice and Kraków (linked by A4) were the only pair of Poland's largest cities connected by a highway;
 * in 2005, A4 connected Wrocław with Katowice and Kraków, while in 2009 – with Germany;
 * in 2006, A2 connected Poznań with Łódź.

2011 – 2015
In the five years from 2011 to 2015, 1563 kilometers of motorways and expressways got opened – about as much as in the whole prior history of highway construction combined. The main focus was on developing connections between Poland's largest cities, especially those serving as host venues of UEFA Euro 2012, as well as on extending A4 towards Ukraine.

The sections opened in 2011 – 2015 belonged to the following highways:
 * A1-PL.svg: + 273 km (A1 on the section Gdańsk – Łódź was completed in 2014)
 * A2-PL.svgS2-PL.svg: + 234 km (A2 on the section Germany – Warsaw was completed in 2012)
 * S3-PL.svg: + 88 km (S3 on the section Szczecin – A2 – Zielona Góra was completed in 2013, except that its older single-carriageway parts remained so until 2017)
 * A4-PL.svg: + 183 km
 * S7-PL.svg: + 138 km
 * A8-PL.svgS8-PL.svg: + 365 km (S8 on the section Wrocław – Łódź was completed in 2014)
 * S1-PL.svgS5-PL.svgS6-PL.svgS11-PL.svgS12-PL.svgS17-PL.svgS19-PL.svgS51-PL.svgS61-PL.svgS74-PL.svgS79-PL.svg: + 282 km in total

2016 – 2020
After the peak of investments before Euro 2012, very few new contracts for road construction have been signed in 2012 and 2013. This resulted in a small number of sections getting opened in 2015 and 2016, large share of which were the last delayed fragments originally scheduled for a Euro 2012 opening. In particular:
 * In 2016, the last delayed fragment of A4-PL.svg between Kraków and Ukraine was opened, making A4 the first major Polish highway completed on its whole length, as well as the first complete border-to-border highway connection.
 * Also in 2016, the delayed bypass of Łódź was finished, making A1-PL.svg completed on its whole route except for those sections where national road 1 had already been a dual carriageway (see In the 1970s), allowing for a significantly lower priority of constructing the remaining stretch compared to other highways.

Since 2014, the number of signed contracts has risen again, resulting in the number of road openings having risen again since 2017.



The sections opened in 2016 – 2020 belonged to the following highways:
 * S3-PL.svg: + 173 km
 * S5-PL.svg: + 227 km (S5 on the section Poznań – Wrocław was completed in 2019)
 * S6-PL.svg: + 128 km (S6 on the section Szczecin – Koszalin was completed in 2019)
 * S7-PL.svg: + 213 km
 * S8-PL.svg: + 128 km (S8 was completed in 2019 on its originally intended route from Wrocław to Białystok; an extension to Kłodzko was later added to the plans)
 * S17-PL.svg: + 97 km (S17 on the section Warsaw – Lublin was completed in 2020)
 * A1-PL.svgA2-PL.svgS2-PL.svgA4-PL.svgS11-PL.svgS12-PL.svgS19-PL.svgS51-PL.svgS61-PL.svg: + 315 km in total (A4 was completed in 2016)

2021 – present
The high tempo of highway development continued in the 2020s. The main focus was on construction of new highways in the less populated eastern Poland, including the international routes Via Carpatia and Via Baltica.



The sections opened, or planned to get opened, in 2021 – 2025 belong to the following highways:
 * A2-PL.svgS2-PL.svg: + 106 km
 * S3-PL.svg: + 104 km (S3 is scheduled to get completed in 2024)
 * S6-PL.svg: + 200 km (S6/A6 is scheduled to get completed in 2025 on its original route from Germany to Gdańsk; western bypass of Szczecin will be constructed later as an alternative parallel route)
 * S7-PL.svg: + 196 km (S7 on the section Warsaw – Kraków is scheduled to get completed in 2025)
 * S19-PL.svg: + 291 km (S19 "Via Carpathia" on the section Lublin – Rzeszów was completed in 2022, except that its older fragment with 2+1 lanes will remain so until 2026)
 * S61-PL.svg: + 183 km (S61 "Via Baltica" is scheduled to get completed in 2025)
 * A1-PL.svg, A18-PL.svg, S1-PL.svg, S5-PL.svg, S11-PL.svg: + 60–80 km each (A1 was completed in 2022; S5 on the section Grudziądz (A1) – Poznań was completed in 2022; reconstruction of the second carriageway of A18 was completed in 2023; S1 is scheduled to get completed in 2025)
 * S12-PL.svgS14-PL.svgS16-PL.svgS17-PL.svgS52-PL.svgS74-PL.svg: + 119 km in total