Alstom has signed a contract with Austrian contractor PORR to design and install railway traffic control systems in the long-distance rail tunnel under construction in Łódź as part of the coming Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (CPK) high-speed network.
Last year in April, the state-backed CPK company that’s steering the recently rebranded Port Polska project selected a PORR-led consortium to build the tunnel under a contract worth around €410 million. The overall contract covers the construction of a 4.6 km long tunnel running beneath central Łódź, with Alstom now locked in to design and install the railway signalling and traffic control equipment inside the tunnel and integrate the systems with the infrastructure around Łódź Widzew station.
The tunnel is set to form part of railway line no. 85, the planned high-speed “Y” route linking Warsaw, the future CPK airport and Łódź by 2032, with extensions planned towards Poznań and Wrocław by 2035. Running 25 to 35 metres beneath the centre of Łódź, the passage is expected to be the longest and largest-diameter railway tunnel in Poland. While trains will operate at planned speeds of up to 350 km/h on the wider network, inside the tunnel the maxmimnum limit will be 160 km/h.
“The design and installation of the railway traffic control system in the long-distance tunnel in Łódź is of strategic importance for the safety and reliability of the entire investment,” said Adam Juretko, Branch Director Katowice at Alstom Polska. “It is a unique project, both in terms of scale and technical requirements. In its execution, we will use the many years of experience of our Katowice team of qualified engineers in designing and implementing control systems, gained both in Poland and through international projects across Europe.”
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